a short quiz on big brother

1. if there were a clickbox labled "allow gov't surveillance", would you click "yes"?

2. do you believe anyone else would click "yes"?

3. if not, then why is there unlimited gov't surveillance?

"better guilty than impotent"

sometimes there is no third option to use, you can't get out of a situation without making yourself look bad. so your best option is basically to take the lesser of two evils.

the catch is that the options that gives you the least problems is also the ones that makes you look like you had no idea what you are doing. so instead you make yourself look guilty in an effort to keep up your reputation.

named from the film version of the sum of all fears, where the russian president takes responsibility for a military strike done by a general acting without orders so it doesn't seem like he was incompetent.

"better guilty than impotent", tvtropes.org

this trope's been rattling around in my head since obama's chosen to vigorously defend the wholesale rifling of all domestic messages by the nsa. in "the sum of all fears" (2002), newly minted and wholly innocent russian president nemerov, after ordering the rogue generals responsible "disappeared", defiantly defends the atrocity as a legitimate response to "a nation of criminals" attacking innocent russians, in order to not appear not in control of his own military. the hero, cia analyst jack ryan, to the derision of washington's defense and intelligence chairs, correctly surmises that nemerov isn't the hardliner he pretends to be and didn't order the attack — ultimately helping both countries avoid being manipulated into global thermonuclear war.

it's difficult to reconcile a constitutional scholar and government transparency proponent defending, much less overseeing, a massive ongoing violation of the fourth amendment. but it's not hard to imagine the nsa (with profiteer booz allen) doing what they're paid to do, in secret, and in the name of the war on terror, simply deciding they could and would eavesdrop on everyone. these are not revelations of new ambitions. so we're left to scratch our heads and wonder if obama chose the lesser of two evils rather than plead ignorance and admit that our intelligence agencies are out of control. or maybe a movie is just a movie. perhaps we'll find out in fifty years or so after the papers are finally declassified (or even sooner if wikileaks or anonymous ever gets hold of them).

accidental art

over the weekend my sister stopped over for a visit and my niece, as is her wont, asked to watch some cartoons on my laptop. data corruption in the video stream and/or disruption of the player app resulted in some not too unsightly imagery, which i captured from the screen:

whatever the cause, i have been unable to replicate the anomaly, so these mini-murals are definitely three-of-a-kind.

the sad trombone

via tumbler, scenes from the night republicans discovered that reality really does have a liberal bias:

four more years ...

still struggling to come out

as everyone knows, second to the initial struggle with accepting an identity that conflicts with the mainstream (especially an antagonistic mainstream), is the painful exodus of even longtime friends unwilling to accompany much less support the journey:

i never post on free republic, although i come here everyday, but something has been bothering me and i'm not exactly sure how to handle it.

ever since his holiness obama has made his gay marriage proclamation, my facebook feed has been inundated by posts from my gay friends about it.

i haven't responded to any of the posts, because i know it would be go over well. none of my friends responses by others has been anything except positive (from the gay point of view).

i'm smart enough to know that not everyone believes in gay marriage, and the ones who feel as i do just don't want to get involved because they don't feel the hassle is worth it.

my issue is that i'm sick to death reading those idiotic posts day after day. i'm fed up and I WILL respond eventually, but when i do, i want to do so calmly, and in a way where i won't come across as a homophobe. i know when i respond i'll lose at least half my gay friends, which sucks, but that's life i guess.

does anyone have suggestions on how i could respond civily? i tend to think i'll leave religion out of it, because i want to come across rationally, and when religion gets into the mix, rationality goes out the window instantly.

i apologize for the lame post, i'm extremely new at this.

— "sporke"

well, that is a painful dilemma, isn't it?

while i'm sure "sporke" isn't the first homophobe to struggle with coming out of the closet, to those taking their first steps, it often feels that way. but whom better to turn to for rational guidance than the "guns-god-and-country"-loving patriots at the wingnut waterhole free republic?

i must admit to my own struggle just sifting out the gold from this rich vein of wingnut wisdom. the first response pretty much summed up the practical advice:

are they real life friends, or FB friends?

if the latter....just unfriend them! no matter WHAT you say...they’ll label you a phobe anyway.

or, say your peace and THEN "unfriend" them.

if the former? they should already know how you feel.

my 2 cents....

— "brad's gramma"

dr. lecter suggests staying in the closet:

anything you say can, and most certainly will, be used against you on facebook. best to leave it be.

— "helloooClareece"

unfortunately there is no response they would consider civil. it's there way or the highway.

BTW the vast majority of people of all ages highly disapprove of the gay agenda.

this has been repeatedly born out by popular elections.

— "cyberSpartacus"

which BTW explains why there are no openly gay elected officials ...

i'm so glad i came across this post, i have been struggling with this as well. i have been trying to compose a response in my head and couldn't quite figure out how to respond to some posts.

after reading what other people have commented, i have decided that they are right and there is nothing you can say that won't make you sound "evil" for disagreeing.

at least we have somewhere to go with like minded people. :-)

— "mrsadams"

it may not be facebook, but sporke's making and helping new friends already!

i have lots of gay friends on facebook and those who vehemently support them. their primary reason for supporting gay marriage is that they hate the dogmatic intolerance of the religious right trying to dictate to them how they should live and what they should believe. in their attempt to sway us away from our beliefs and doctrines for its intolerance, they often display the most hateful,vicious intolerance themselves for those with whom they disagree. the hypocrisy is lost on them. do not trouble yourself to respond.

— "erkyl"

we like our intolerance just fine, thank you!

the only reason homosexuality is wrong is because god said so.

— "donna"

which, until god changes his mind, should be good enough for everyone!

... you could also point out to your gay friends that they already have the right to marry—everyone does as long as they marry someone of the opposite sex. gay people CHOOSE not to exercise these rights. they aren’t denied anything. they want special privileges. why should two able-bodied gay men who can work their whole lives without ever producing children together get special privileges?

— "dupree"

and up to now i thought that this talking point was universally recognized even by wingnuts for the cynical absurdist joke it is. apparently, not everyone is in on it.

i don’t have any "gay" friends, wouldn’t associate with anyone gay, won’t work with anyone gay (that i’m aware of) because my views are well known on the subject and folks know exactly where i stand.

— "maddog55"

well, alrighty then — problem solved! forever!

(cross-posted at daily kos)

quote of the day

via twitter:

PIGS Y U NO FLY? AWESOME SHIT WILL HAPPEN WHEN U FLY.

steve jobs, r.i.p.

over nearly thirty years, every computer i've ever owned was made by apple. as a computer-curious artist, steve had me with macpaint. i still have a copy of the program and a working mac plus to run it on ...

macpaint (1984)

apple iic (1984), something of a novelty item

macintosh plus (1986), my first art computer

performa 600 cd (1992), color! with built-in cd drive

power mac 8500 (1996), my first video-capable unit

powerbook lombard (2000), my first laptop

powerbook g4 line (titanium, 2001 & aluminum, 2005)

ipod g3 (2003)

ipod g5 video (2005)

macbook pro (2010)

see also:
computer comix v1.0
computer comix v2.0
computer comix v3.0

and a meme is born

fright wing

burning up the interwebs this past week was the village voice's cover story on white fright, but i thought the cover itself, by unforgiving longtime favorite stippler of the stars drew friedman, was worth the trip for its own sake. if you've ever wondered who actually got the commission to paint the portrait of dorian gray ... look ye no further:

quote of the day

hacker masato nakatsuji after his arrest, charged with unleashing the destructive "octopus virus", which replaces all of its victims' files with cartoon images of cephalopods:

i wanted to see how much my computer programming skills had improved since the last time i was arrested.

webcams: not just for perverts

berlin (AP) — watch the sunset, save a life. a woman admiring the sunset on a tourist webcam in northern germany spotted a man who was lost on the frozen north sea and probably saved his life by alerting authorities, police said wednesday. the man had climbed over pack ice off the coast to photograph a sunset near the town of st. peter-ording, then became disoriented on the ice, husum police spokeswoman kristin stielow said. unable to locate the beach, the man began using his camera to flash for help. that got the attention of a woman hundreds of miles (kilometers) away in southern germany who was watching the sunset over the sea on her computer. the woman contacted police, who located the man's signals and guided him into shore by flashing their car lights. officiers then lectured him on the dangers of trekking on the ice. police would not identify the man or the woman who spotted him. stielow said he was a german tourist in his forties. she said locals are well aware of the risk of disorientation as darkness falls and the beach becomes hard to identify, but vivid sunsets over frozen landscapes often draw people away from the shore. at the time the man lost his bearings, the air temperature was below freezing. he could have frozen to death or fallen through the ice, stielow added. st. peter-ording is popular tourist destination known for its beaches and sailing, and the local tourism board runs a web site with a webcam. the board, however, said images from the webcam are routinely erased and the dramatic flashes from the man's camera were not saved before the story came to light.

how i learned to stop worrying

... about the coming machine slaughter and love HP!

from gizmodo:

this is awkward. it appears that HP's new webcams, which have facial-tracking software, can't recognize black faces, as evidenced in the above video. HP has responded: we are working with our partners to learn more. the technology we use is built on standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose. we believe that the camera might have difficulty "seeing" contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting.

so this difficulty somehow escaped HP's attention because ... ???

help me out here, HP.

don't bother door

one of the advantages of the internet over pre-internet information gathering and dissemination is speed. it's often tedious and expensive to collect, publish, maintain and update any sizable body of knowledge. by allowing everyone to participate in the fun and allowing the always vaster number of information consumers to join or even supplant the always limited number of producers, not only does the internet allow daunting databases to be built much faster than before, it allows databases of esoteric knowledge that might never exist for lack of a profit model to be built by dedicated followers.

but one of the obvious disadvantages of this new production model is the swamping of the expertise and professionalism of small self-selected credentialed organizations by the amateurism and even mischief and malfeasance that large anonymous pools of contributors can be susceptible to. if information spreads faster on the internet, so does misinformation and disinformation and if it's always been true that a lie travels around the world in the time it takes the truth to put on its shoes, then the truth is just barely catching up.

these are neither novel nor profound observations but nowhere are they better illustrated than in online lyric databases. the amount of data involved has the disadvantage of being enormously vast while the pool of experts and standards has the disadvantage of being completely nonexistent while the task of collecting it has the disadvantage of being utterly profitless, making the area an ideal medium for error and garbage.

if there's one thing that's plainly obvious when browsing lyrics sites, it's that they swipe their entries from each other, mistakes and all. since there's no profit, there's no incentive for independent research, and since the sites don't own the data, they won't sue each other for infringement. if one site has an incorrect entry, they all have it:

lovin' spoonful — coconut grove lyrics it's really true how nothin matters. no mad, mad world and no mad hatters. no one's pitchin cause their ain't no batters in coconut grove. don't bother door. theirs no one comin. the oceans roar, were double drummin. of many silly thoughts and silly ways the ocean breeze has cooled my mind. the salty days are her's and mine just to do what we anna

the lovely and haunting coconut grove does not suffer from slurred vocals. john sebastian was no michael stipe yet the song's entry is not only riddled with absurd errors, but is also inexplicably incomplete. thankfully, former van halen frontman david lee roth covered the song, which somehow earned him an entry with more accurate lyrics:

david lee roth — coconut grove lyrics it's really true how nothin' matters no mad, mad world and no mad hatters noone's pitchin' cause there ain't no batters in coconut groove don't bar the door, there's no one comin' the ocean's roar will dull the drummin' of any city thoughts and city ways the ocean breezes cool my mind the salty days are hers and mine to do what we wanna tonight we'll find a dune that's ours and softly she will speak the stars until sunup it's all from havin' someone knowin' just which way your head is goin' who's always warm, like in the mornin' in coconut groove

but even roth's version diverges from the original complete lovin' spoonful rendition, in verse 5:

coconut grove by lovin' spoonful it's really true how nothing matters no mad mad world and no mad hatters no one's pitching 'cause there ain't no batters in coconut grove don't bar the door, there's no one coming the ocean's roar will dull the drumming of any city thoughts and city ways the ocean breezes cool my mind the salty days are hers and mine just to do what we want to tonight we'll find a dune that's ours and softly she will speak the stars until sunup it's all from having someone knowing just which way your head is blowing who's always warm, like in the morning in coconut grove the ocean breezes cool my mind the salty days are hers and mine just to do what we want to tonight we'll find a dune that's ours and softly she will speak the stars until sunup it's really true how nothing matters no mad mad world and no mad hatters no one's pitching 'cause there ain't no batters in coconut grove

the internet's great, but sometimes you still gotta do some things yourself.

aw, jeez ...

we all knew jim horne, certainly anyone in commercial design for the last half century, and most certainly anyone with an internet connection for at least the last five years, even if we never knew his name, which i learned for the first time today:

for about 15 years beginning in the late 1940s, mr. horne was ubiquitous, perhaps the most widely seen male model in the country, appearing in hundreds of advertisements in magazines and newspapers, on billboards and catalog covers, in television commercials and industrial brochures. he died on dec. 29 in manhattan, at 91. his wife of 45 years, francesca marlowe horne, said the cause was cancer, but added that he also had congestive heart failure.

i doubt many people knew he had been still alive.

mr. horne had been an actor with bit parts in hollywood movies before moving to new york city and establishing a second career. he had a chiseled jaw, a distinctively rounded hairline, a seemingly permanent pompadour, a gleaming california smile and an athlete's physique. it was an image that photographers and advertisers found easily adaptable to a number of stereotypes of the day: the dashing ladies' man, the dapper dandy, the devoted dad, the suburban husband, the businessman commuter, the country club sophisticate and the one mr. horne, an avid fisherman, preferred: the rugged outdoorsman. [snip] he learned the lesson of how evanescent celebrity could be without a famous name. few, if any, of his photographs still strike a familiar chord. well, maybe one does: a jokey shot taken in 1953 (whose rights he signed away), showing him with a sour, headachey expression of generic woe; it has been used dozens of times, even in the last decade, in ads for aspirin, tax services, hangover remedies and other stress relievers. his wife said it didn't bother him that this was the image that survived. "to him it was a job you did," mrs. horne said. "and then you went fishing."

it's nice to finally get a name to the face:

i'd say goodbye, but i have a feeling he'll still be with us for a good long time ...

just picture the candidates

and a new meme is born ...

i drink all your internet traditions!

so here's my contribution:

(if you need to catch up on the story, it germinates here, metastasizes here and becomes pandemic here.)

the young person's guide to net neutrality

a public service brought to you by henry rollins of the independent film channel's the henry rollins show:

freedom is under attack — under attack by hysterical and well-funded christian psychotics. intellectually undernourished leaders who lie and manipulate information. overfed baby huey coward bitch motherfuckers like karl rove and their suck-up weakling apologists like sean hannity. to question authority is to be somehow unpatriotic, un-american and in league with terrorists worldwide? fuck you! with even election results becoming more and more questionable, the constitution a thing to be manipulated, ignored and frivolously amended, even democracy itself seems to be on the run. so where's the one place you can go and tell your version of the truth, rail against liars, fakes and propagandists with your own unique propaganda, sign your name to it and let the whole world know how you feel? that's right. the internet. perhaps responsible for the most substantial shifts in culture in the last several decades. there's so much freedom and potential on the worldwide web that one is barely able to get one's head around it. who in their right mind would dare to regulate or charge websites to be on the internet? who would dare to rain on a parade so fantastic that many of us would not know what to do without our high-speed connection and our lives on the internet? actually, some very powerful forces. telco companies want to make you pay for your site to be carried on the internet. if you can't afford to pay, guess what? that's right, you're cyber-history, pal! the bush administration wants major internet and phone companies to keep track of where their customers surf, all in the name of the "war on terror", don't you know. how much do you wanna bet they want the internet regulated, contained and thrown into a cell at guantanamo bay? for a country that talks so much about freedom being on the march, seems to me that some people want anything but! if they come for your freedom, you must not only resist, you must strike back with a vengeance that will stun them. on this front, if your anger and outrage are not at the forefront, then you're already dead! dead to me, anyway. fuck these cowards! these traitors! these ENEMIES of democracy! thanks for watching the show this season. never relent.

note: in an otherwise solid introduction to the developing struggle over net neutrality, henry mistakely mischaracterizes the telcos' plan as wanting to burden the end user with excess access fees.

what the telcos really want is to get their fees directly from the access providers, who in response would create segregated tiers of access, rewarding the affluent with state-of-the-art high speed high bandwidth content while relegating the rest of the population to the equivalent of the internet ghetto.

today msnbc.com competes for your attention on the same playing field as glad-you-asked.blogspot.com, but the telcos want to apply the corporate television model to the internet, which rewards institutional media outlets with disproportionate impact, benefits and profits relative to their resource-starved public-access brethen.