[She]
later told police the entire
encounter was consensual.
Web Log Archive, February 4th through February 17th, 2007
Saturday, February 17th, 2007
[She]
later told police the entire
encounter was consensual.
Lost in translation: "But here's my point: Either they knew or didn't know, and what matters is, is that they're there. What's worse, that the government knew or that the government didn't know?" Alfred, 2/14/07
Friday, February 16th, 2007
Thursday, February 15th, 2007
Courtesy
of my old (well...she's younger than I am!) Pisces friend Katherine Crabtree (via Charlene Ryan of the Soboba
Band of Luiseņo Indians), here's what I looked like in a former
incarnation. Pretty neat photo! It's ~September, 1970 at Barry
Olivier's Folk Festival at the Greek Theater in Berkeley.
<<<Click to enlarge.
Wednesday, February 14th, 2006
"I
have been accused of being a dyslexic retard who can't even
stutter in
his native tongue."
Tuesday, February 13th,
2007
Happy Birthday, Debbie!
Monday, February 12th, 2007
The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats, 1919
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Sunday, February 11th, 2007
ROM is 'Read-Only-Memory'.
It is that with which a silicon-based machine starts. Over the life of a
computer (or any ROM-equipped-device), it does not change. Sometimes, ROM
is referred to as 'firmware'. It is an embedded 'program'...or set of programs.
It defines the structure and, yes, the limitations of a device.
It may be likened to what a carbon-based organism has inherited. It is
there at birth.
ROM is regularly updated to suit each new silicon-based design.
The BIOS (Basic Input Output System) is a kind
of ROM that is integral to the workings of each silicon-based machine. BIOS firmware
must be compatible with the 'hardware' to which it interfaces. The
incompatibility of a BIOS with its hardware usually yields the carbon-based-equivalent
of a stillborn.
RAM is 'Random Access Memory'...sometimes called 'dynamic memory' or 'working memory'. It starts where ROM leaves off. It is what a computer uses to 'work with'...to run 'software'. The amount (and speed) of the RAM in a silicon-based machine effectively places a limitation on what that machine can do. RAM may be (crudely) likened to the 'brainpower' of a carbon-based organism. Unlike ROM, RAM has a kind of flexibility and can usually be expanded during the life of a silicon-based machine, just as can the brainpower of a carbon-based organism, with effort and attention, be expanded.
At the risk of a stretch, we might say that ROM circumscribes the 'nature' of a machine while RAM circumscribes its 'nurture', or its interactions with the 'outside world'.
It
must be clear that our 'nature' (that which we have inherited from our
ancestors) changes only very slowly over the length of many lifetimes.
Unlike the ROM of a silicon-based machine, there are no timely upgrades for
carbon-based organisms.
The genetic material with which I began my life in the middle of the 20th
century is surely indistinguishable from the genetic material with which my
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather began his life in,
say, the 15th century. But the world in which I live today would be all
but unrecognizable to my 'Old World' ancestor.
Much of what we label 'instinct' is a manifestation of our (inherited) nature.
The well-known
observation that 'dogs usually turn around many
times before lying down [may be] due to the fact
that their forebears lived in grasslands and...had to make nests in the grass by
turning around trampling out a bed for themselves.' Similarly, so
much of today's human behavior makes no sense when viewed only in
the context of our present-day environment.
Saturday, February 10th, 2007 Happy Birthday, Bernie!
Friday, February 9th, 2007 The 36th Anniversary of the Sylmar Earthquake in Los Angeles
This
exchange from a 'Fresh
Air' interview with German writer and director Florian
Henckel von Donnersmarck, on his new film about Eastern Germany after World
War II, entitled, 'The Lives of
Others':
Q: What
is it that people miss about Communist rule?
A: I don't think they're missing Communism.
I think they're missing their own youth. While there was communism, they were
young and so while they think they're wanting communism back, they're
actually wanting their youth back!
Thursday, February 8th, 2007
Imagine
if you worked at a place every day for twenty years, went away for three, and
then returned to find that almost nothing had changed while you were gone
except, of course, that all your former colleagues (along
with you) were three years older.
Some of them looked three years
older.
Some of them looked six years older...but some of them didn't look
any older.
Wednesday, February 7th, 2007
"The
weakest of all weak things is a virtue that has not been tested in the fire.
Virtue has never been as respectable as money."
Mark
Twain
Tuesday, February 6th,
2007
"On
the cold, drizzly night of Feb. 6, 1951, a Pennsylvania Railroad express train
called "The Broker" derailed
and crashed on a temporary trestle near
downtown Woodbridge.
Eighty-five of the 1,100 people on board died [among
them, my father: DuPont engineer, Joseph Shine]
and
hundreds were injured."
Josh Margolin,
Newark Star-Ledger
Monday, February 5th, 2007
"With
hordes of foreign visitors expected in town for the 2008 Summer Olympics,
Beijing wants to cleanse its signs of translation nonsense. For the next eight
months, ten teams of linguistic monitors will patrol the city's parks, museums,
subway stations and other public places searching for gaffes to fix.
[Recently, workers replaced] one of the classics: 'Dongda
Hospital for Anus and Intestine Disease Beijing'.
The new sign [will simply read]: 'Hospital of
Proctology' "
From today's Wall Street Journal
Sunday, February 4th,
2007
The Thirty-Third Anniversary of the Kidnapping of
Patty Hearst
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land." God
Meekness: Uncommon
patience in planning a revenge that is worthwhile. Ambrose
Bierce
Meekness: How the novice hides faith in his cards. Al
Meekness: The state of two people who meet in a
"Returns" line, carrying each others' gifts. Charles