Links for October 14th from 09:25 to 16:56

by

Sometime between 09:25 and 16:56, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Is Science Fiction Feminized Or Is It Sexist? Both.: "Women are being welcomed into science fiction, but it's though the back door. Let's not start patting ourselves on the back because we can recognize rank sexism when we see it written by an anonymous guy on a radical right wing opinion blog. We can celebrate how far we've come from our sexist past when women and men are equally represented in the pages of science fiction anthologies. And when the next big, blow-em-up spaceship movie is written and directed by a woman. Until then, we have a lot of work to do. Work that involves challenging people who actually have the power to alter the course of SF as a genre. Work that is a lot harder than ridiculing an anonymously published blog post." Interesting, thoughtful response to the "women are killing sci-fi" blog post that I linked to the other day.
  • Know Thy Enemy: They've introduced bigoted legislation, filed referendums, held rallies, and raised money—but they've never gotten around to explaining how gay couples actually hurt their marriages. They've also allegedly done things like failed to pay taxes, raised rents on the elderly, and beaten their wives. They say their battle is a righteous one, but these four crusaders are short on righteousness and long on catacombs in the closet.
  • Photos: Rare Snapshots From Early Star Trek Conventions: A fun collection of old Star Trek convention snapshots, with accompanying audio.
  • If God Had Wanted Me to Be Accepting of Gays, He Would Have Given Me the Warmth and Compassion to Do So: "I don't question God. The Lord is my Shepherd and I shall put none above Him. Which is why I know that if it were part of God's plan for me to stop viciously condemning others based solely on their sexual preference, He would have seen fit–in His infinite wisdom and all–to have given me the tiniest bit of human empathy necessary to do so. It's a simple matter of logic, really. God made me who I am, and who I am is a cold, anti-gay zealot. Thus, I abhor gay people because God made me that way. Why is that so hard to understand?" Oh, how I love the Onion.
  • Hey, Marriage-Minded Teens! It’s Teen-Time!: "Teen-Time demonstrates a delightfully astonishing lack of understanding of its target market. Hilarious generalizations abound. The playing field centers around — where else? — a mall and a video store. But let's just cut right to the exquisite central absurdity of Teen-Time… the object of the game is to get engaged to be married before your fellow teens do. Seriously."
  • I-1033 a Windfall for the Rich: "In August, the state Office of Financial Management estimated that in 2015, Eyman's initiative would force the state to refund $1.8 billion in property taxes. What the fiscal note didn't say — and which got no mention that I could find anywhere — is that the state only collects $1.8 billion in property taxes. It all goes to public schools. In Olympia they call it the 'state school levy.' What this means is that state economic forecasters have predicted Eyman's initiative would eliminate most if not all of the state school levy in five, maybe six years. That would be 25 percent of state school funding — gone."

Links for October 12th through October 14th

by

Sometime between October 12th and October 14th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Dispatches From a Public Librarian.: "Libraries don't earn money for a city, but they do earn a city pride; they enrich lives; and most importantly, they help people get the skills they need to reenter the work force. In hard times, they shouldn't have limited service hours–they should have expanded services hours. When a person goes to a library to get help seeking employment, and they see a notice on the door that says that due to cutbacks the library is not open, it only adds to the persons frustration that there is no hope or places to go for the help that they need. […] Spread the word. If you approve this dispatch (or even if you hate it, but you like libraries) then start a Twitter trend—just tweet #savethelibrary."

  • A Brief History of Gummy Bears: "In 1920, a poor confectionery factory worker in Bonn, Germany, decided that it was high time he struck out on his own. Armed with nothing but a bag of sugar, a marble slab, a kettle, an oven and a rolling pin, Hans Reigel began whipping up hard candies in his kitchen, which his wife would then deliver from the basket of her bike. The new company was called Haribo–a smash up of Hans Riegel of Bonn. After two years of middling profits, the Riegels realized that they'd need a gimmick and fast to keep competitive."

  • Sendak, Ever-Untamed, Sees Wild Things Adapted: "'I advised [Jonze] to make more mischief, and he made more than most,' says Sendak. 'In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger. And I did not want to reduce Max to the trite image of the good little boy that you find in too many books.' 'Maurice was our sort of mentor in this whole thing,' said Jonze. 'He was the one person that I really wanted to please. The thing that's so great about him is he wanted me, early on he said, `You need to make this your own. Don't worry about me, don't worry about the book, don't worry about what anyone else expects. You have to just make something bold and not pander to children and make something that's as dangerous for its time as the book was in its time.''"

  • iTunesLP.net: "iTunes LPs are a new format introduced by Apple in version 9.0 of their popular iTunes software. The idea is to recreate the old LP experience by providing additional content such a lyrics, liner notes, photographs and other content. At this moment these iTunes LPs are available for a select list of new releases on the iTunes store. However we think it would be nice to have many older, out-of-print, obscure albums or albums on indie-labels to get the same experience; and with that in mind we started working on finding out exactly how this new format works, in order to share our results with the community."

  • The War on "Real" Science Fiction: "…there is an undeclared war on real science fiction on TV and in movies. The former Sci-Fi channel, now 'Syfy', is a good example of what has been happening to science fiction on television. In 1998 Bonnie Hammer took over the Sci-Fi channel and declared that 'more female viewers were needed'. Over the next several years, the Sci-Fi channel became increasingly feminized losing many of its traditional male viewers in an attempt to go after women viewers. This included making the logos 'warmer and more human' because the logos before were 'too male and too dark'. The biggest change was in the feminization of the programming shown on the Sci-Fi channel." And that's just the beginning. Yup, modern science fiction sucks, and it's all the fault of the girls! Oh, and the gays, too! Girls and gays, ruining sci-fi for all us manly men, who just want to shoot aliens and each other. Girls should only be allowed when they're in peril, wearing skimpy clothing, waiting for us to rescue them.

  • Kinder, Gentler Spider Eats Veggies, Cares for Kids: "Each of the world's 40,000 spider species survives by hunting and killing — except, that is, for Bagheera kiplingi, the world's first vegetarian arachnid. Found in Central America, the order-defying jumping spider eats nutrient-rich structures called Beltian bodies, which are found on the tips of Acacia trees. And that’s not all: It looks like B. kiplingi males help care for eggs and young — something entirely unprecedented in the spider world."

Links for October 7th through October 12th

by

Sometime between October 7th and October 12th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Goodbye Halloween, Hello “Safety”: "'The bottom line is that I cannot find any evidence that any child has ever been killed or seriously hurt by a contaminated treat picked up in the course of trick-or-treating,' says Joel Best, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware. The fear is completely unfounded."
  • Eyman Initiative Gets an ‘F’ From Teachers: "'If this goes through, we will never recover money lost in this budget: We will never fund the class size initiative that voters passed,' said Meg Town, who teaches science at Redmond Jr. High. The teachers talked forcefully of what they do. It's a heckuva lot more than teach core classes five periods a day: The 'more' motivates students, opens up career choices, and keeps at-risk kids in school. The 'more' is what's getting whacked. The Legislature's budget is being felt now: The pains will be magnified and made permanent if voters approve Eyman's initiative."
  • In Surprise, Nobel Peace Prize to Obama for Diplomacy: "The Nobel Committee announced Friday that the annual peace prize was awarded to Barack Obama, just nine months into his presidency, 'for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.' The award cited in particular Mr. Obama's effort to reduce the world's nuclear arsenal. 'He has created a new international climate,' the committee said."
  • Toys"R"Us Scolded for Gender Discrimination: "Last winter, a sixth grade class at Gustavslund school in Växjö in south central Sweden reported Toys'R'Us to the Reklamombudsmannen (Ro), a self-regulatory agency which polices marketing and advertising communications in Sweden to ensure they are in line with guidelines set out by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). According to the youngsters, the Toys'R'Us Christmas catalogue featured 'outdated gender roles because boys and girls were shown playing with different types of toys, whereby the boys were portrayed as active and the girls as passive', according to a statement from Ro."
  • An Open Letter to the Guy Who Put Just a Geek the Audiobook on His Website for People to Steal: "I'm Wil Wheaton. I wrote Just A Geek, and I created the audiobook you're helping people steal. You may not know this, but I 'm just one guy, without a publisher, so when you help people steal this copy of Just A Geek by making it available for download, you're basically stealing directly from me. You're not stealing from some big publisher with deep pockets who is trying to rip you off with overpriced stuff; you are stealing directly from me, an indie artist and publisher who counts on every sale to make a living. I have to tell you, guy-who-I-won't-link-to-for-obvious-reasons, what you're doing sucks. It sucks a lot."

Next Month: YES on R-71, NO on I-1033

by

There’s a local election coming up in just under a month, and much like any non-presidential election, turnout is expected to be sadly low. I persist in hoping that anyone reading this will take the time to vote — it’s especially easy around here, now that King County has gone to an all-mail balloting system. Just fill out the ballot, drop it in the mail or one of the many free ballot dropboxes, and you’re done. Quick and simple. So do it. There’s no good excuse not to.

There are two measures on the ballot this time around that deserve particular attention: R-71 and I-1033.

Approve Referendum 71Vote YES on R-71. Washington voters already approved a domestic partnership law, and R-71 (put on the ballot by people opposed to the domestic partnership law who hope to overturn it) is asking whether we should uphold that legislation. Simple answer: yes.

There are more than 12,000 people in Washington state registered in domestic partnerships. Gay and lesbian families need domestic partnership laws to provide essential protections for their families. Families with children need the protections provided by domestic partnership laws, especially when a parent dies. Seniors need the protections provided by domestic partnership laws. For seniors, domestic partnerships mean that their hard-earned social security, military or pension benefits are not put at risk. Police officers and firefighters who risk their lives to protect our communities need domestic partnership laws if they are hurt or killed in the line of duty, so that their families are taken care of by their pension or workers’ compensation. By voting to Approve Referendum 71, you will vote to ensure that all families, in all parts of the state, should be treated fairly, with the same protections and responsibilities, especially in times of crisis.

While there’s a lot of support for approving R-71 among people I know (nearly all of my local Facebook contacts are ‘fans’ of the Approve R-71 Facebook page), a recent poll shows only a slim lead.

Referendum 71, which would uphold the state’s domestic-partnership bill if approved, is leading in the Seattle area but losing in less populous parts of the state, according to a poll conducted by Survey USA. Of the 548 voters surveyed in Washington, 45 percent said they would certainly approve the measure, 42 percent said they would reject it, and 13 percent were undecided.

A lead is good, but it could be a lot better than that. Spread the word.

C8334F30-0974-49C4-8DA2-6860255A54A9.jpgVote NO on I-1033. The latest in Tim Eyman‘s series of proposals, I-1033 carries potentially disastrous repercussions should it pass…and recent polls show that it has a strong possibility of passing.

Tim Eyman’s Initiative 1033, which would lower taxes but ultimately devastate government budgets, would pass if voters had to decide today, the poll also shows. Of likely voters in the general election, 45 percent of respondents would certainly vote yes, 32 percent would vote no, and 22 percent were undecided.

As with most of Eyman’s proposals, they sound good on the surface, but don’t hold up well under close scrutiny — and, unfortunately, most people only bother with the surface. Here’s The Stranger’s look at what I-1033 would mean if it passes:

Tim Eyman’s new initiative, which will be on your ballot in November, seems simple enough. It would essentially limit the amount of money the government can collect from taxpayers based on how much it collected the previous year, adjusted for inflation and population growth. Any surplus the state collects would go toward reducing property taxes. Eyman says Initiative 1033 would stabilize the legislature’s “fiscal roller coaster, overextending themselves in good times—creating unsustainable budgets—which led to slashing during bad times.”

So what could go wrong?

If passed by voters, the measure would lock Washington into its current budget—the worst budget the state has had in decades, owing to the recession—and prevent the budget from expanding when the economy improves. So the state at its leanest—like right now, with a budget requiring the state to lay off roughly 3,000 teachers and cut basic health services for 40,000 people—would become the most robust the state could ever be. In addition, the gap between costs and revenue would steadily grow, because costs for services and shifts in demographics (like more students in schools and old people in nursing homes) outpace inflation and population growth.

Indeed, even the early forecasts of I-1033 show potentially devastating impacts on the state’s budget for education, health care, and vaccines. As a result, class sizes could grow, increasing numbers of poor and elderly people would be kicked off state-funded health programs, and response to natural disasters and disease outbreaks would be minimal because the state couldn’t run surpluses to pay for them.

Sadly, while the Approve R-71 campaign is and has been going strong (in one admittedly somewhat questionable metric, their Facebook page has almost 15,000 ‘fans’), the No on I-1033 campaign has yet to achieve nearly the level of consciousness (their Facebook page is at 2,260 ‘fans’), and without more people realizing just what the consequences of passing I-1033 will be, the slick language of the initiative stands a strong chance of pushing it through, and crippling Washington’s budget for the foreseeable future.

That’s it, then. Slightly less than a month. Two important measures, both of which could use more support. Yes on R-71. No on I-1033. Don’t forget to vote.

Links for October 2nd through October 5th

by

Sometime between October 2nd and October 5th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • DropBox: "Dropbox is the easiest way to store, sync, and, share files online. There's no complicated interface to learn. Dropbox works seamlessly with your operating system and automatically makes sure your files are up-to-date. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux." Just got this installed on the 'puters I'm using frequently, and so far, it's seamless and really impressive. Off to a good start.
  • Can I change the frequency that google notifier (Mac OS X) checks my email?: You can adjust the interval by clicking on the mail icon and then holding down the Command and Option keys while clicking on Preferences. This will pop open a box for a key/value pair. Use AutocheckInterval as the key (case-sensitive) and then set the interval (in minutes) for it to check as the value.
  • Gender in Pixar: "Even though Pixar puts a lot of effort into creating stand-out female supporting characters, it is far past time that they put that very same effort into telling the story of such a character instead of simply including her in someone else's. Girls, put simply, need to have leading characters that they can look up to just as much as boys do; they need to experience stories that are about a woman's dreams, struggles, and trials. At the end of the day maybe we're talking about animated children's films**, but such media in at least some small respect has a part in informing the way that a child develops and begins to think about the world around them."
  • Can a Woman "Prong" a Man? Why it’s so hard to put sex in the dictionary.: "WARNING: This piece contains vulgar language—lots and lots of it—that may be inappropriate for children or the faint of heart." That said, if you are neither a child nor faint of heart, it's well worth reading — an interesting and often amusing look at the difficulties encountered when dictionaries attempt to deal with sexual matters.
  • Dark Stalking on Facebook: "By far the most interesting part of all of this have been dark users. Like dark matter, these users are not directly observable, usually because they've completely disabled API access. In fact, some of these users are completely dark unless you're a friend. They don't show up in search results. They don't show up on friends' lists. You can't send them messages. These users have their privacy settings turned up real high, and are supposed to be hard to find. However like dark matter, dark users are observable due to their effects on the rest of the universe. If a dark user comments on a stream entry, I can see that comment. More importantly, I can see their user-ID, and I can generate a URL to a page that will contain their name. I can then watch for their activities elsewhere. Granted, I can't directly search for their activity, but I can observe their effects on my friends. For want of a better term, I've been calling this "dark stalking"."

Links for September 30th through October 1st

by

Sometime between September 30th and October 1st, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • A Planet That Rocks: "The newly-discovered exoplanet COROT-7b has an unusual form of precipitation: rocks. Because it orbits so close to its sun, the temperature on its sun-facing side is around 4220 degrees Fahrenheit. That's hot enough for rocks to vaporize — not unlike water evaporating on Earth. And, like Earth, when the vapor cools in the upper atmosphere, it forms clouds and begins to rain. But instead of water, COROT-7b gets a shower of pebbles."
  • No Thumbprint, No Money, Bank Tells Armless Man: "'They looked at my prosthetic hands and the teller said, 'Well, obviously you can't give us a thumbprint',' Steve Valdez told CNN on Wednesday. But he said the Bank of America Corp branch in downtown Tampa, Florida, still insisted on a thumbprint identification for him to cash a check drawn on his wife's account at the bank, even though he showed them two photo IDs."
  • PCalc Prevents iPhone Profanity: "We are happy to announce that the latest version of our PCalc scientific calculator for the iPhone contains a new patent-worthy profanity filter. Simply enter a number such as '5318008″, turn the calculator upside down, and the offending word will be discreetly censored. Many common calculator words have been included as standard, and we plan to increase this over time via software updates."
  • The Grand Unified Theory of Superman’s Powers: "Ryan North, of Dinosaur Comics fame, asked his friend Ben Tippett to write a scientific paper-style analysis of Superman's powers after listening to Tippett describe his unified theory of the Kryptonian's abilities. Tippett, trying to understand Superman's powers from a physics perspective, has posited that Superman doesn't have multiple superpowers, but one amazing ability: 'It is our opinion that all of Superman's recognized powers can be unified if His power is the ability to manipulate, from atomic to kilometer length scales, the inertia of His own and any matter with which He is in contact.'" This link goes to Io9's overview, the actual .pdf file of the full theory is also available (.pdf link).
  • why i am not afraid to take your money, by amanda fucking palmer: "for the last 10 years, i have been working my ass off…tirelessly making music, traveling the world, connecting with people, trying to keep my balance, almost never taking a break and, frankly, not making a fortune doing it. i still struggle to pay my rent sometimes. i'm still more or less in debt from my last record. i'll lay it all out for you in another blog. it's just math. if you think i'm going to pass up a chance to put my hat back down in front of the collected audience on my virtual sidewalk and ask them to give their hard-earned money directly to me instead of to roadrunner records, warner music group, ticketmaster, and everyone else out there who's been shamelessly raping both fan and artist for years, you're crazy."

Use your Twitter stream for Mac OS X’s RSS Visualizer screensaver

by

Just a quick little tip for OS X users. Nothing fancy, and others may have figured this out already, but a quick Google search didn’t come up with answers, just questions…so here we are.

For the uninitiated, one of the default screensavers in OS X is the RSS Visualizer, which shows a slick ‘floating text’ presentation of the text from any RSS feed against a cloudy blue background.

I wanted to put my Twitter timeline in, so that even when my ‘puter’s not doing anything, and I’m across the room reading on the couch, I can keep an eye out for updates. Seems simple, but on first blush, it didn’t seem to work, as I just got the background, and no tweets.

That’s an easy fix, though. Twitter password protects your RSS feed, so that other people can’t ‘hack’ into your feed and see updates from those of your contacts who have protected their feed from public view — and the screensaver options don’t give a way to enter your Twitter username/password combination.

Twitter does, however, respect RSS-embedded passwords. So, in order to get the screensaver to work correctly, change the RSS feed from the default

http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.rss

to a customized

https://USERNAME:PASSWORD@twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline.rss

format, and you’re off and running.

Note that I’ve changed the protocol from http to https to avoid transmiting my Twitter username and password in cleartext. With the standard http protocol, in theory, if someone was really determined, there’s a chance that they could intercept the TCP stream between your computer and Twitter and see your Twitter login credentials. Using https (the ‘s’ stands for ‘secure’), the information between your computer and Twitter is encrypted, so that packet sniffers wouldn’t get anything.

And that’s it! One Twitter-enabled RSS screensaver.

Links for September 29th through September 30th

by

Sometime between September 29th and September 30th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Poll: Eyman Initiative 1033 Looks Likely to Pass: "As I've said before, Eyman's initiative would fuck the state of Washington, even though the language seems innocuous. It would essentially limit the amount of money the government can collect from taxpayers based on how much it collected the previous year, adjusted for inflation and population growth. Any surplus the state collects would go toward reducing property taxes. But in practice, the measure would lock Washington into its current budget–the worst budget the state has had in decades, owing to the recession–and prevent the budget from expanding when the economy improves. So the state at its leanest–like right now, with a budget requiring the state to lay off roughly 3,000 teachers and cut basic health services for 40,000 people–would become the most robust the state could ever be."
  • JK Rowling Lost Out on US Medal Over Harry Potter ‘Witchcraft’: "A memoir by George W Bush's former speechwriter claims that Bush administration officials objected to giving JK Rowling a presidential medal of freedom on the grounds that her Harry Potter books 'encouraged witchcraft'." Huh. I'd have figured it was because in the later books, she rather shamelessly and not very subtly mocked the Bush Administration and general U.S. post-9/11 paranoia.
  • Reminder: Roman Polanski Raped a Child: "Roman Polanski raped a child. Let's just start right there, because that's the detail that tends to get neglected when we start discussing whether it was fair for the bail-jumping director to be arrested at age 76, after 32 years in 'exile' (which in this case means owning multiple homes in Europe, continuing to work as a director, marrying and fathering two children, even winning an Oscar, but never — poor baby — being able to return to the U.S.). […] Can we do that? Can we take a moment to think about all that, and about the fact that Polanski pled guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, before we start talking about what a victim he is? Because that would be great, and not nearly enough people seem to be doing it."
  • Rare Important Instantaneous Photograph: "It became necessary, one day, at Willet's Point, to destroy a worthless mule, and the subject was made the occasion of giving instruction to the military class there stationed. The mule was placed in proper position before the camera and duly focused. Upon the animal's forehead a cotton bag was tied containing six ounces of dynamite….."
  • Vikings ‘Were Warned to Avoid Scotland’: "Scotland is full of dangerous natives who speak an incomprehensible language and the is weather awful. That was the verdict of a series of 13th century Viking travel guides that warned voyagers to visit at their peril."
  • Steampunk’d: Diana Vick’s Victorian sci-fi dream for Seattle.: "'IT'S MASSIVELY CREATIVE, insanely inventive, and extraordinarily unique.' That's Diana Vick (pictured) describing steampunk, which she's certain will be the next subcultural wave to hit the Emerald City. She's banking on that certainty as cocreator of Steamcon, a convention celebrating the hottest movement in sci-fi."