The Mad Filkentist
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "madfilkentist" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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08:09 am
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Bookstore Tour: Chapter 2
Mondays aren't good for visiting used bookstores. Second Hand Prose and Bearly Read Books were both closed. But I got to the Concord Bookshop and Willow Books. These both sell new books and are pleasant to browse around. Willow Books, in Acton, has quite a large children's section.
In Willow Books I glanced at The Classic Tradition of Haiku, which is a short collection of haiku in Japanese, transliterated into the Roman alphabet, with English translations. It was only $3.00, so I picked it up.
There are a few more pictures up.
Tags: bookstore_tour
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02:16 pm
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Charles Brown
Charles N. Brown, the longtime editor of Locus magazine, died on his way home from Readercon.
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09:08 am
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Galaxy Quest
This weekend I finally got hold of the 10th anniversary Galaxy Quest CD. The extras with this edition are really worth watching.
But seeing it so soon before the opening of the next Harry Potter movie, strange crossovers are forming in my mind. "By Grabthar's Hammer, you shall be expelled!"
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07:16 am
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Bookstore Tour: Chapter 1
Yesterday I went on the New Hampshire seacoast leg of my bookstore tour. The weather was excellent, but I forgot my camera, so sorry, no pictures this time. ( Cut for length )
Tags: bookstore_tour
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09:46 am
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Yet another grid of ideas
Various two-dimensional grids, such as the Nolan Chart, have been proposed to get away from the oversimplification of the left-right political axis. Last night I was thinking of a different way, more philosophical than political, to set up a grid on the motivation of people's politics. ( Some philosophical delvings follow )
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09:03 am
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Zap!!
Google's logo for today celebrates Tesla's birthday.
Thanks to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) sibylle for the early notice.
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11:19 am
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Tintenherz
My count of books read for July may be down from the usual five or six, since I'm giving a lot of time to Tintenherz. It's over 500 pages long, and I still don't read German very fast.
The book feels rather padded. Practically very scene is full of dialogue, which makes things move slowly. There's one scene where the protagonists' car has suffered a blowout, and they want to push it off the embankment because their pursuers aren't far behind them and would see the car. The villains' car is following close enough that they've been able to see its headlights behind them. So what do they do? They argue with each other before trying to push it out of sight! The villains conveniently drive slowly, or something.
The chief villain, Capricorn, is a very one-dimensional character. There's a good reason for it in the context of the story, but it's hard to take him seriously. Mo is a trusting fool; I kept mumbling "Idiot!" at him (pronouncing it in German, naturally) as I was reading the book on the train this morning.
On the other hand, a book that's full of dialogue is very good for German practice. One of the harder things for me is to speak the language like a normal conversationalist rather than a news reporter, and reading Der Spiegel doesn't help in that regard. The protagonists' love of books is a strong point in their favor, and the authors who keep being mentioned -- J.R.R. Tolkien, William Goldman, Ray Bradbury, Shel Silverstein, Robert Louis Stevenson, etc. -- are ones I can definitely relate to.
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09:36 am
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Kennedy defends pork-barrel spending
It turns out that the Senate's "healthcare" bill includes lots of pork-barrel projects, such as "walking paths, streetlights, jungle gyms, and even farmers’ markets."
But Teddy Kennedy assures us that this isn't pork-barrel spending: "Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, defend the proposed spending as a necessary way to promote healthier lives and, in the long run, cut medical costs. “These are not public works grants; they are community transformation grants,’’ said Anthony Coley, a spokesman for Kennedy, chairman of the Senate health committee whose healthcare bill includes the projects.
So "community transformation" is now a medical expenditure in Kennedy's eyes. Medical care is never more expensive than when it's "free."
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07:37 pm
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United Breaks Guitars
When I fly to ConChord by United in September, I'll be bringing just a carry-on, and definitely not my keyboard. The excellent song on this YouTube video confirms my decision.
And remember: Never piss off a bard.
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06:22 am
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Obama vs. Obama
Obama, who's already pushed corporate welfare to new levels with the bailout of General Motors, now wants to compel people to fork over money to the insurance companies or pay a fine -- Massachusetts' "Romneycare" on a national basis. This would complete the job of separating patient from customer and drive costs ever higher. But don't take my word that it's a bad thing to do. Take Obama's -- before the election, that is.
Current Mood:  angry
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12:31 pm
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Yankees back down from authoritarian stance
The New York Yankees have stated that they will no longer have goons preventing people from going to the bathroom while "God Bless America" is performed. The City of New York will pay $10,001 in a settlement plus $12,000 in legal fees to a man who tried go to the bathroom during the mandatory religious observance and was ejected from the stadium by the police.
I'll be satisfied when Steinbrenner stands up in Yankee Stadium during a baseball game and apologizes to everyone for ever having had such a policy, and when the police department admits wrongdoing.
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06:55 am
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Cyber-size me
Lately I've noticed that when people want to scare the public with a computer issue, they use the prefix "cyber." Computer security is an important everyday issue, but in national policy discussions it becomes "cybersecurity," with the spectres of "cyberterrorism" and "cyberwarfare" being raised. A Washington Times article tells us that the US government has established a "unified cybercommand" to guard against "cyberattackers" in "cyberspace." Bullying is a common problem at schools, where it often involves physical attacks, but when it's just words on the Internet, it becomes "cyberbullying" and supposedly needs to be addressed by federal law.
It isn't used for non-scary stuff. People would look at me strangely if I said I was sending "cybermail" or downloading "cybermusic" (or is it "cyberdownloading music"?).
This may be an echo of the exaggerated dangers portrayed in "cyberpunk" novels, which are where the term "cyberspace" comes from. But as a genre that's passé. Maybe it also comes from movie cyborgs that smash everything in their path.
PS: I forgot "cybercriminal." And that article, on the vulnerability of Social Security numbers to statistical guessing, is interesting in itself.
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12:04 pm
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What if Van Flein isn't an idiot?
Earlier I wrote about Thomas Van Flein's absurd threat to bloggers and news media: "But this looks like a case of waving a red cape in front of bloggers, not to mention major newspapers, to try to make them shut up. That trick never works."
But it occurs to me: Waving a red cape doesn't make anyone shut up, but it can be a great way to distract attention. What if Van Flein made an intentionally ridiculous threat in order to get people focused on a non-existent federal investigation, so that they wouldn't think about what the "other shoe" might actually be? Perhaps it's a civil action in the making, perhaps an ethics investigation. Perhaps resigning was the price Palin had to pay to get it dropped, but she wanted the extra insurance of a red (Alaska) herring.
Current Mood:  cynical
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09:18 am
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Experiencing the digital TV revolution
To get a taste of what digital TV is like, I ordered a 7-inch set from Radio Shack. While doing my bookstore tour on Friday, I tried it out in various places. The first thing you have to do is scan the spectrum to see what channels are available. In my home, in Manchester, and in various points north, it wasn't able to get a single channel.
Finally I took the set to an elevated, open place on the hill my condo development is built on, and scanned again. It found exactly one channel, a Spanish-language channel which came in poorly. Digital distortion is very interesting; rather than smearing the whole picture, it consists of blocks of solid color where the signal has dropped out. With bad analog reception, you can usually make out the sound; with bad digital reception, the sound suffers as badly as the picture. I know only a few words of Spanish, but I don't think I'd have been able to make out the dialogue even if it were in English.
Digital TV strikes me as a net loss, unless you're in a prime reception area or have a signal coming directly into your set.
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06:28 pm
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Reminder
If you know me personally and think that some Internet service is so exciting I should use it, feel free to send me e-mail telling me about it. However, please do not send me an "invite" by way of that service as a substitute for personally contacting me. Some services consider that a sufficient excuse to spam the "invited" person ever afterward.
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06:50 am
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A Fourth of July TEA party
Now this is the way to celebrate the 4th of July.
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08:08 pm
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Statement by Palin's lawyer
Thomas Van Flein, a lawyer for Sarah Palin, is reported to have said:
To the extent several websites, most notably liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, are now claiming as 'fact' that Governor Palin resigned because she is 'under federal investigation' for embezzlement or other criminal wrongdoing, we will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation. This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law.
I don't know exactly what Van Flein is referring to. The closest I've found so far is this Huffington Post article: "For weeks the rumors of a criminal investigation against the governor have been brewing. They are rumors, but are swirling fresh again with Palin's resignation. I'm holding my breath for the other 'Naughty Monkey' to drop." I'm reasonably sure that saying "rumors have been brewing" doesn't count as a statement of fact that there is a federal investigation. I tried searching for Moore's name together with the phrase "under federal investigation," which Van Flein puts in quotes, and couldn't find anything in which Moore uses those words in connection with Palin.
Maybe I just haven't found the relevant quote. But this looks like a case of waving a red cape in front of bloggers, not to mention major newspapers, to try to make them shut up. That trick never works.
Update: Van Flein was also involved in Palin's attempt to suppress the state legislature's "Troopergate" investigation. That trick didn't work either.
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12:21 pm
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Subscription fraud
I've received two invoices in the mail, purporting to be from American Cheerleader. Each got my name wrong in a different way. The return address is P.O. Box 674, Mt. Morris, IL. I've never subscribed to the magazine and can't think why I ever would.
A web search doesn't turn up any information about that address, so the invoices may be from some operation impersonating the magazine. The other possibility is that the subscription agency is legitimate but hasn't been using that address for long, and that someone fraudulently submitted subscriptions in my name, failing twice to get it right.
For now I'll just hang on to the materials.
Update, July 7: I contacted American Cheerleader through their web form and today received a reply saying that the subscriptions had been cancelled. So the subscription agency is real, which means someone submitted fraudulent subscriptions in my name.
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08:47 pm
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Bookstore Tour: Preface
I made an early start on my planned bookstore tour, dropping in on two rather widely spaced bookstores in New Hampshire and doing other interesting things along the way.
My first stop was Liberty Books in Concord, NH. This was about what I expected it to be: a small, somewhat disorganized bookstore with a talkative, interesting proprietor, Jim Dodson. In addition to libertarian materials, the store has a lot of comics and graphic novels, and a small but varied used book section. I picked up The Discovery of Freedom by Rose Wilder Lane, which is a classic I've never read, as well as a very interesting-looking historical paperback called The Last Jews in Berlin.
Then I went up to Wolfeboro, on Lake Winnipesaukee, and dropped in on The Country Bookseller. There I looked through the materials on New England, and picked out something called Abandoned Villages and Ghost Towns of New England. That was a total waste of money. The author is completely credulous about every legend he's ever heard. He echoes all the promotional claims about "America's Stonehenge" (a vastly over-hyped archeological site in Southern New Hampshire) and expects us to believe that North Pepperell is under a witch's curse. Can I put a curse on the author?
 All through my drive, the weather kept going from sunny to ominous to rainy and back again. This let me get some impressive-looking pictures. I particularly like the one with an extinct volcano in the background ... which doesn't look so extinct.
Tags: bookstore_tour
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08:07 am
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Notes for July 4
In 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote some words which are very foreign in spirit to modern America:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
The idea that governments are instituted just to secure rights is far removed from modern American thinking, at least if rights are limited to such things as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Today, people think governments are instituted to get us goodies at someone else's expense. To make sure other people don't do things that we don't approve of. To "protect" them from their own bad choices. To run the economy. To fight enemies all over the world. Not just to let us pursue happiness, but to make us happy. To give us "hope."
We're told that once upon a time, a government that just upheld our rights was reasonable, but that today's society is so much more complex that a central authority must run many aspects of it. There's no sense in that claim. The more there is to know, the less it's feasible for a single authority to control all its aspects intelligently. Congress passes thousand-page bills dealing with its issues its members can't understand, without reading them. This demonstrates the failure of centralized authority in a complex society, not its success.
We're told that such a government is based on "compassion." Actually, governments are based on force. Compassion means, or used to mean, caring about people and acting to help them. Today it means forcing other people to do it and taking the credit, while denouncing those who provide the means as "greedy capitalists."
We're stuck with what we have today. Once people discover that they can use government as a means for controlling and robbing others, it's hard to get them to give it up. But let's not pretend that this shows how far we've advanced since Jefferson.
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