Month: April 2002

I watched The Drew Carey Show just now. The episode was about Kate dating someone who might have been the Devil (played by Murphy Brown’s Grant Shaud) and what should come on but an ad for the caring, sensitive new Maury Povich Show. So here’s the coincidence: the Devil claimed he invented the whole sensitive guy shtick. (But then the Devil learned that Kate is only a virgin when she’s drunk and he stormed off without the gang’s souls.)

[With apologies to the cartoonist]

(1)(a)

Customer service

Agents no help, no power

Anger burns my ass

(1)(b)

Endless yammering

Talk radio features fools

Who listens today?

(2)(a)

Teens rebel (again)

Hair, music, marijuana, X

All old is new now

(2)(b)

Middle age men shake

Life will not last forever

Begin to sleep less

(2)(c)

Old men take up arms

Hand them to angry youngsters

Young die, old die soon

Am I too old to enjoy National Lampoon’s Van Wilder? Apparently not, since I laughed my ass off this afternoon as we were watching partymeister Ryan Reynolds and goddess/journalist Tara Reid get their groove on after defeating the evil frat boy Daniel Cosgrove. Seriously, the latest film from National Lampoon could have been titled Animal House: The Next Generation and while it doesn’t quite reach the heights of that classic, it’s better than any Lampoon film since the original Vacation. The original had Belushi and no one comes near his brilliance, but we do get Tim Matheson (Otter in the original) playing the father of our hero and Reid blows Karen Allen and Mary Louise Weller out of the water. And we get the dog and the jokes and pranks he’s in. Although some people might think better of eating beforehand.

And by extension, Israel too. Steven admonishes us to read David Brooks’ Weekly Standard article Among the Bourgeoisophobes by asserting “this article is breath-taking in its perception.” The article does present at least part of the answer to the question I posed in the title of this post.

So, anyway, this simple American does as suggested and nearly has his brain burned by the light. Well, okay, it was good but perhaps not brainburningly brilliant. Brooks takes a historical look at the roots of the discontent between Europe and America and between (fanatical) Islam and America and finds them in the rise of a group of European intelligentsia soon after the birth of this nation. These people, such as Stendahl and Flaubert, saw themselves as the moral and intellectual superiors of the crass merchant class which was just then beginning to dominate politcal life and which they saw as the pure heart of America. The article is lengthy and has its flaws but I recommend taking the time to read it.

Charlie Stross, an Englishman, completely disagrees with Brooks’ argument. Stross’ main criticism centers on the way Brooks supports his claims by quoting old and dead people rather than more recent sources. Not unreasonable and he doesn’t just say the EU is any better; he calls their governments a “pack of chimps.” But Stross does err in asserting that America is a global empire on autopilot. Unquestionably America and Americans are the dominant global forces these days but we are hardly an empire and hardly monolithic, even in the moneyed classes who control what force the country does have. And I don’t believe we’re on autopilot either. For further elaboration, and if you care to add your opinion, try the Clueless discussion.

[Note: I actually read this as a four part serial in Analog, the book version will be out in June]

Robert J. Sawyer has written a terrific story in Hominids. Different experiments in quantum physics cause a connection to be formed between the Earths of two parallel universes: one quite similar to ours and one in which Neanderthals rather than Cro-Magnons persisted and developed into a technological society. One of the scientists from the Neanderthal’s Earth, Ponter Boddit, is conveyed into ours to begin the tale. One might expect an X-Files or Men in Black story to unfold but actually the authority figures somehow stay out and allow private individuals to direct the activity; this is the reason I said “one quite similar to ours” since this would not be possible even in our Canada (the story takes place there).

The differences in the societies–not only do we get to see Ponter’s view of us but the story alternates between our world and his–are well thought out but in many ways not too surprising. I think much of the author’s depiction is based (as well it should be in science fiction) on extrapolations of current day anthropological theory with a nice mix-in of quantum theory. Which is a better hypothesis, Copenhagen or Many Worlds? Sawyer proposes a reasonable compromise that incorporates elements of both in the guise of telling us Ponter’s worldview. The scenes set in our world are mainly a chance for him to talk about society and some of it’s ills and I am hardpressed to believe that the contrast drawn is intended to suggest a better way; all the action takes place in the other Earth as Ponter’s loved ones try to determine what happened to him and to retrieve him. The writing is excellent and, at least at this length, the flow and movement keeps one’s interest.

Sawyer has an excellent website with just about anything one might want to know about him and his writing but one piece of missing information is any explanation of the difference between this serialized version and what will be published in the June hardcover edition. I doubt that the serial amounts to even half the word count of the novel. Still, don’t want to fuss on this point since I did enjoy the read. Hominids is the first book of the Neanderthal Parallax trilogy so what I’ll probably do is wait until 2004, when all three books ought to be out in paperback, and buy the lot then to read in one sitting.

Ev has been promisingpromotinginforming us that a new. improved publishing engine for Blogger is coming. And us fanatics are waiting patiently (well sort of), especially for an update to the API that would include the title and a more robust server codebase. Perhaps the time of this engine is drawing near, but it isn’t here yet as evidenced by this screenshot from today’s (April 5) Evhead:

What’s wrong? Well, the date is not March 29. Also, the engine is supposed to process the weblog template and replace the Blogger variable $BlogItemSubject$ with the post’s actual title. Further, and this is not possible to see from the screenshot, the permalink (represented by the time stamp at the end of the entry) is not generated correctly either.

Ev, we are waiting with baited breath. You know that we tease because we love; a friendly, communal kind of love, don’t get the wrong idea, you funny guy.

Update five minutes later: Well Ev is fast, I’ll give him that! He either fixed the three bugs I listed really quickly or else went back to publishing via the old engine. Either way I was correct in grabbing a screenshot for this entry!

Stories abound of people who are hounded by agents of the IRS on seemingly inconsequential grounds. This is not one of them. This is about incompetence and lack of accountability. I am due a nice refund this year, a few thousand dollars, from the Feds. As opposed to last year when I unexpectedly had to pay tens of thousands of dollars to them. So as soon as my return came back from the accountant, I went down to the USPO and sent it in. Checked my bank account balance almost daily starting about two weeks later (this is the time frame my accountant said to expect) hoping to see those extra dollars. Not there. Not there. My paper state refund shows up in the mail yesterday (thanks, Gray Davis and Kathleen Connell) and I think that the Feds must have had enough time as well.

Sure enough, the IRS website gives me a number to call to find the status of my return. The computer states that the money was deposited into my account on March 22. Sufficient time has passed that the money should be showing up, so I call CalFed’s customer support line. The nice woman there searched and found no transfer of the specific amount into their system from any source to any account in the last 30 days. Uh oh.

The IRS system had given me a follow-up number to call in case of any problems. Doesn’t this make you think they get more problems than they ought to if they give out the number automatically? Perhaps the system has some embedded logic, though, which says if A (say a refund was made) and B (the refund is a direct deposit) and C (the deposit was made more than one week ago) then the person calling probably hasn’t received the refund in which case there is a problem and gives out the follow-up phone number. Don’t think so, do you? As Dennis Miller says, “Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.”

Anyway, I call up this morning and speak to agent 1600xxx. This obviously bored and uninterested woman tells me, after looking into the database, that the money could not be deposited into my account due to either a mistake in entering the account information or a bug in their software which does not accept a leading zero in the account number. Yes the deposit attempt was made on March 22; somehow it took until today for the system to recognize that the deposit did not go through–what a coincidence, eh?–and so a paper check will be mailed. Today. No wait a sec. Next Friday. Yes, a check will go out in one week. Um no, no way to speed it up, this is how the system works. Yes, you do have to wait an extra four weeks to see that money. No, the government does not pay a penalty or interest in this situation. Yes, if you did this to us you would have to pay penalty and interest. Sorry.

Or at least some of the employees. Check out Rob Fahrni’s latest amusement: The picture and the explanation. It is to laugh! And works as a Mirror project submission too if he wants.

[Note: this is not about some great new way to get porn over the Internet.] [Erased cliched introduction before publishing] Services are appearing to take Web communication to the next level: syndication. Using one form or another of a standard called RSS (Rich Site Summary), websites–even those as simple as BillSaysThis–can make content available through distributors automatically with little more effort than a few minutes to sign up. Some content publishing tools automate this process (some tools promise it’s coming real soon), some sites use scripts to generate this dynamically, and others have fans/audience members who write something site-specific.

One of the prime movers behind this effort is Jeff Barr’s Syndic8.com. This site has available over 7200 individual feeds written in at least 18 languages and is now experimenting with web services through an XML-RPC API. This API allows other sites and applications to interact with the Syndic8 database, not only to discover or manage individual feeds but to look at aggregations–categories, locations, activity. For example, the weblog you are reading now is in there.

One of the current Syndic8 efforts, driven by Bill Kearney, is to add geographic information to the feeds through the API. In fact, he wrote a script that looks up the domain to get the IP address and the location of that address (which is in the Whois database) and then uses the API to feed it to Syndic8. Of course for the most part the location determined by this brute force methodology is incorrect, for example there is no correlation between this website and the city of Davie, Florida. But Kearney has taken the first step and now the creators of the feeds can see what is happening and put in the correct data. This would mean adding the location information as metadata in their RSS; my pages have it but due to the way the RSS and underlying weblog pages are generated, it is not yet in the RSS. There are complications caused by differing versions of RSS and the toolkits used to produce the files but what else is new in Webland?

Here is one result of the aggregated information:

I asked Bill for the details on how he did the work so far:

“I did most of the work using perl, PHP, Radio, MySQL and XML-RPC calls.

I extracted the feeds from the Syndic8 server database using GetFeedInfo calls. I then locally extracted the hostname and looked up it’s IP address. Once I had the IP address I used the Geo-IP and NetGeo database to cross-reference it. This info was then sent back up to the Syndic8 database using the SetLocationInfo call.

So the latitude/longitude pair info is based solely on the server IP address info as can be determined from thet NetGeo database. That’s largely based on the whois databases. This means it’s only as accurate as the info contained in that database.”

The Reds made it through the Champions League second round a few weeks ago for a quarterfinal matchup against German club Bayern Leverkusen, currently the top-ranked club in the world. Today LFC hosted the Germans and came out on top 1-0 on a goal by captain Sami Hyypia in the 44th minute. A major victory indeed, even with the goal coming from a surprise source, a defender who put in only his second ball in 26 European matches. Next Tuesday will see the return match in Germany and the Reds need only a tie to advance for what looks like a semi-final against rival Manchester United. The boys are doing well in the Premiership as well, sitting in second a point behind Arsenal with four matches to go (Arsenal has five left), and are in a good position to pull off a double given their recent mastery over ManU.

In general I believe the entertainment companies are going too far in their war to prevent piracy, hence the BST homepage links to Stop the CBDTPA and Stop Policeware. But in specific cases, though, I’m all for it. The Hollywood Reporter says that Celine Dion’s new CD will crash PCs and Macs it is played on due to the use of Key2Audio copy protection in Germany and several other European countries. Hey, this is Celine Dion! As far as I’m concerned, the CD ought to crash any machine it is played on anywhere in the world. Then I would never hear it.

It make them yummy filet mignon! Oh and the bacon, bbrrrrrrr!!!! That was so good last night. Crunchy asparagus. Salad. Blue cheese dressing. <drool><drool><drool>

Or just total morons? Check out Get ready for advertisers to take over your Web browser. If this ridiculous product becomes available, the web will take another step towards the sad and useless. This is what I wrote to the vendor’s CEO today:

I hope what I’ve read this morning regarding your new product with the strange name is not true and just some April Fools prank. If this browser hijacking is what you expect to sell, I hope you are prepared for a huge negative backlash. Personally, I would not knowingly visit any site that implements this, I would write any sites I currently read that do implement your product to alert them as to why I no longer visit, and I would recommend to my friends and online communities that they do the same. There are enough tools including JavaScript, Flash, and so forth to implement desirable functions inside a web page that redesigning my (and I emphasize MY) browser is excessive and unnecessary.

I hope you are getting many emails and communications similar to mine, enough that you will rethink this folly and refocus your company’s efforts on a more useful product.

In today’s SF Chronicle, Tom Abate writes that VaxGen is hedging its bets with a new venture. Abate is referring to Celltrion, the recently announced joint venture with some Korean firms to build biotech manufacturing plants. The primary purpose of these plants will be to produce AIDSVax, the vaccine that Vaxgen currently has in Phase III human clinical trials, but will be used for contract production for other biotech firms should the vaccine not receive FDA approval after the trials end later this year. In one of the more important bits of information, which abate treats as almost a throwaway line, Sharon Seiler of Punk Zeigel & Company is quoted as saying that VaxGen could be a $38 stock. As opposed to $11.60 as of this writing. Let’s just say $38 would make Bill a yummy profit.