Ecstacy or meth?

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Here’s one hell of an “oops” — a greatly publicized study detailing the harmful effects of popular drug Ecstasy has been retracted after the scientist realized that instead of Ecstasy, methamphetamine had been used in the experiments.

“We write to retract our report ‘Severe dopaminergic neurotoxicity in primates after a common recreational dose regimen of MDMA (Ecstasy)’ following our recent discovery that the drug used to treat all but one animal in that report came from a bottle that contained methamphetamine instead of the intended drug MDMA,” Ricaurte said in the retraction, to be published in the Sept. 8 issue of Science.

While I’m certainly not going to promote drug use in general, or Ecstasy in particular, that’s one hell of a mistake to make, especially for such a widely-distributed report. Truth to tell, I’ve always been a little suspect of studies on both sides of many drug issues — for every study that comes out that claims any given drug is fine, causes no problems, and should be de-regulated, another will come out claiming that said drug will cause major biological and psychological disorders for the user and their descendants for the next twenty generations, and often both studies will come from groups apparently equally well credentialed. So who do you trust?

Validation favelets

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Jeffrey Zeldman has posted two ‘favelets’ for easy one-click site validation. Drag them onto your browser bookmark bar, and with one click, you can run any page you’re at through the W3C’s beta page validation service. Very handy.

On a related note, every page of this redesign validated from the get-go. The single issue I ran into was with a link in a story earlier where I’d forgotten to escape the ampersands in the link. The ampersand character — & — should be coded in valid HTML as &, and failure to do so will result in broken validation. Unfortunately, because many database-driven sites use a URL format of http://www.server.com/option1=“sample”&option2=“sample” or some such, you occasionally need to remember to fix the link so that it looks like http://www.server.com/option1=“sample”&option2=“sample”. A minor annoyance, but not insurmountable. Once I got that link fixed, I validated without any further changes needed. Go me!

You idiots can't drive

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Jonas posted what to me is an absolutely fascinating post yesterday:

People often ask me, what – in my opinion – is the biggest of all differences between European and US-American societies. Most expect me to answer along the lines of crooked politicians (sorry, no difference, there), or the food, beer, and wine quality, but nawp. The most fundamental of them all, the mother-lode of differential lifestyles, the one thing that gives the deepest, most sincere, look into the respective societies, is the drivers test, and the DMV in general.

He then goes on to describe the amazingly different approach that Europe takes with people before letting them get behind the wheel of a car. To sum up:

  • A six- to nine-week class (minimum).
  • Actual in-car learning doesn’t start until around week three.
  • Mandatory test driving situations, “including night-drives, driving in bad weather, and the no-hold-barred-no-speed-limits-anywhere Autobahn.”
  • First-aid and roadside assistance training and testing is madatory.
  • Final driving tests with an approximately 20% failure rate.
  • A two-year probationary period after receiving your licence. Infractions within this time send you back to driving school.

That system is so much better than the ludicrously simple system we have here in the states. We get, what, a written test that a badly-trained monkey could pass, and a driving test that usually involves going around the block a few times? Then we’re allowed to get on the road, no holds barred. It’s really frightening when you stop to think about it — or when you get cut off at 65MpH on the highway.

Jonas sums it up quite nicely at the end of his post:

We expats get to hear a lot about the Second Amendment and its application back home. “They give guns to everyone?”, my friends ask. “Don’t mind it,” I usually reply, “they do much worse. They give cars to everyone.”

Well, would'ja look at that?

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And here we go, folks — step one of the new design. It’s not completely finished yet, as all I’ve got active at the moment is the primary content, but the rest will follow soon enough.

Update: Okay, I should have thought to check this first, but this redesign has just proven — again — that Internet Explorer sucks. This may or may not get fixed in the future — I’m tempted to just leave it as-is. I’m doing things correctly, dammit, and it’s not my fault that that program doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. Grrr.

Update: That’s it — we’re live. The only page I have yet to dink with is the ‘About’ page, but considering it’s 4:22am, I need to get to bed. All pages linked in the navbar now work, and there are even more choices for RSS feeds available (Full posts with comments, full posts without comments, and excerpts only). I still haven’t looked into the IE wierdnesses, but that will come. Maybe.

Another idea

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Another possible redesign

Work continues on reworking the design of this place. I think I’ve finally come up with something that I like, too — miracles never cease!

This time, I took some time to bounce around some of the sites that have caught my eye the most. Generally, they tend to be the exact opposite of what I’ve had here for a long time. Where I’ve had some sort of compulsion to present everything possible at once, all on the front page, I’m far more drawn to very sparse, open, clean designs. Yet, for absolutely no reason that I can come up with, I’d never made an attempt at that style.

So, this is where I think I’m heading at the moment. The navigation bar at the top will take care of all the extraneous crap. ‘About’ will lead to my about page, which will absorb things like my music and reading lists. ‘Past’ takes care of my archives. ‘Comments’ will catch the last n comments made (I’m waffling on this one, actually — it seems a little silly to have a page just for that, but it’s also really nice to have a quick reference of when someone’s said hello). ‘Elsewhere’ will handle both the blogroll and the Destinations feed (just how, I’m not sure yet, but that will come). And lastly, ‘Feeds’ will hold my RSS feeds (which I plan on expanding to include an excerpts feed, a full post feed, and a comment feed).

At least, that’s the basic concept to start with. As always, questions, comments and words of wisdom are greatly appreciated!

Update: A quick list of inspirations, code examples, and other ideas as I work on this. Links may be added here as I go.

Pshaw. Rank amateur.

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I think I mentioned to Bob [Geldof] I could make love for eight hours. What I didn’t say was that this included four hours of begging and then dinner and a movie.

— Sting, admitting to exaggerating his abilities in the past.

(via Go Fish)

Company on the way!

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I’m going to have company for about the next week, which should be fun (if, possibly, a teense bit crowded in my little studio apartment).

For the past two years, my brother’s fianceé Emily has been working with the Peace Corps in Ghana, teaching English to the children there. She and two friends are on their way back up to Alaska, and have about a week here in Seattle before heading up to Alaska. Seeing how it seems a little silly for her to spend the money on a hotel for a week when she has (almost) family here in town, I offered her a place to stay.

Emily just called a few minutes ago, and she and Amy will be over here in about an hour or so. Dawn shows up in a few days, and then they’ll all be leaving next Friday. A little crowded, but should be fun.

And yeah — for the next week, I’m living in a studio apartment with two or three girls. Gee, ain’t life tough? ;)

In the beginning…

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I first saw this years ago, and recently ran across it again thanks to Dave Caolo. It’s always made me laugh, hopefully you will too.

In the beginning, there was the computer…

In the beginning there was the computer. And God said

c:> Let there be light!

Enter user id.

c:> God

Enter password.

c:> Omniscient

Password incorrect. Try again.

c:> Omnipotent

Password incorrect. Try again.

c:> Technocrat

And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Sunday, March 1.

c:> Let there be light!

Unrecognizable command. Try again.

c:> Create light

Done

c:> Run heaven and earth

And God created Day and Night. And God saw there were 0 errors.
And God logged off at 12:02:00 AM, Sunday, March 1.

And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Monday, March 2.

c:> Let there be firmament in the midst of water and light.

Unrecognizable command. Try again.

c:> Create firmament

Done.

c:> Run firmament

And God divided the waters. And God saw there were 0 errors.
And God logged off at 12:02:00 AM, Monday, March 2.

And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Tuesday, March 3.

c:> Let the waters under heaven be gathered together unto one place and let the dry land appear and

Too many characters in specification string. Try again.

c:> Create dry_land

Done.

c:> Run firmament

And God divided the waters. And God saw there were 0 errors.
And God logged off at 12:02:00 AM, Tuesday, March 3.

And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Wednesday, March 4.

c:> Create lights in the firmament to divide the day from the night

Unspecified type. Try again.

c:> Create sun_moon_stars

Done

c:> Run sun_moon_stars

And God separated the light from the darkness. The sun ruled over the day and the moon and stars ruled over the night. And God saw there were 0 errors.
And God logged off at 12:02:00 AM, Wednesday, March 4.

And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Thursday, March 5.

c:> Create fish

Done

c:> Create fowl

Done

c:> Run fish, fowl

And God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that creepeth wherewith the waters swarmed after its kind and every winged fowl after its kind. And God saw there were 0 errors.
And God logged off at 12:02:00 AM, Thursday, March 5.

And God logged on at 12:01:00 AM, Friday, March 6.

c:> Create cattle

Done

c:> Create creepy_things

Done

c:> Now let us make man in our image

Unspecified type. Try again.

c:> Create man

Done

c:> Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth

Too many command operands. Try again.

c:> Run multiplication

Execution terminated. 6 errors.

c:> Insert breath

Done

c:> Run multiplication

Execution terminated. 5 errors.

c:> Move man to Garden of Eden

File Garden of Eden does not exist.

c:> Create Garden.edn

Done

c:> Move man to Garden.edn

Done

c:> Run multiplication

Execution terminated. 4 errors.

c:> Copy woman from man

Done

c:> Run multiplication

Execution terminated. 2 errors.

c:> Create desire

Done

c:> Run multiplication

And God saw man and woman being fruitful and multiplying in Garden.edn
Warning: No time limit on this run. 1 errors.

c:> Create freewill

Done

c:> Run freewill

And God saw man and woman being fruitful and multiplying in Garden.edn
Warning: No time limit on this run. 1 errors.

c:> Undo desire

Desire cannot be undone once freewill is created.

c:> Destroy freewill

Freewill is an inaccessible file and cannot be destroyed.
Enter replacement, cancel, or ask for help.

c:> Help

Desire cannot be undone once freewill is created.
Freewill is an inaccessible file and cannot be destroyed.
Enter replacement, cancel, or ask for help.

c:> Create tree_of_knowledge

And God saw man and woman being fruitful and multiplying in Garden.edn
Warning: No time limit on this run. 1 errors.

c:> Create good, evil

Done

c:> Activate evil

And God saw he had created shame.
Warning system error in sector E95.
Man and woman not in Garden.edn. 1 errors.

c:> Scan Garden.edn for man, woman

Search failed.

c:> Delete shame

Shame cannot be deleted once evil has been activated.

c:> Destroy freewill

Freewill is an inaccessible file and cannot be destroyed.
Enter replacement, cancel, or ask for help.

c:> Stop

Unrecognizable command. Try again

c:> Break
c:> Break
c:> Break

ATTENTION ALL USERS *** ATTENTION ALL USERS: COMPUTER GOING DOWN FOR REGULAR DAY OF MAINTENANCE AND REST IN FIVE MINUTES. PLEASE LOG OFF.

c:> Create new world

You have exceeded your allocated file space. You must destroy old files before new ones can be created.

c:> Destroy earth

Destroy earth: Please confirm.

c:> Destroy earth confirmed

COMPUTER DOWN *** COMPUTER DOWN. SERVICES WILL RESUME SUNDAY, MARCH 8 AT 6:00 AM. YOU MUST SIGN OFF NOW.
And God logged off at 11:59:59 PM, Friday, March 6.

On March 8, God created the Macintosh.