Tergiversations of a Traveling Mind

An Unspeakable Act

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 02:49:50 GMT

I don't usually consider myself a mean person. But sometimes there are good causes for dastardly deeds. (I apologise in advance for my treachery)

Because I actually think this is a pretty good mashup. :D

In case you intentionally didn't click the link because you saw it coming...Enjoy!

The Adventures of Lil' Cthulhu

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:29:13 GMT

And just because I seem to be remarkably unproductive today:

From the video description:

Want a child-friendly way to introduce your little one to the traditions of the Old Cult? Meet little Cthulhu, who lives in the magic city of R'lyeh with all his friends, as you and your child embark on a fun and educational journey through the world of the Great Old Ones, meeting all kinds of new buddies from the Necronomicon along the way, from Azathoth to Yog-Sothoth! This series has won multiple awards and has been enthusiastically approved by the department of child-developmental psychology at Miskatonic University.

I'm looking forward to purchasing the full collection when it comes out. I want to give "Lil' Cthulhu" to all the nieces and nephews and younger cousins...it's certainly less terrifying and far more wholesome than that Barney and Teletubbie crap! It's good to see a children's series teaching good, old-fashioned religious values...

Going Against ACTA

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:44:19 GMT

For those of you who haven't heard about it yet, ACTA is a multi-national treaty that has been negotiated for several months behind closed doors regarding copy protection, and it makes the DMCA look pretty tame. Here are a few of its stipulations should it go through:

Breaking copy protection becomes illegal, even when doing it for legal reasons like accessibility for the blind

ISPs are legally obligated to monitor traffic and to shut down Internet access to the entire household of the accused offender -- before they have gone to trial and received a legal verdict on the allegation

The legally mandated "innocent until proven guilty" is turned on its head: alleged infringers are required to prove their innocence after they have been punished, and copyright holders have genuine legal ground to demand records of users from ISPs without specific evidence of misconduct

Of course, the corporate interests who are writing ACTA aren't considering the ramifications, such as an entire town that loses Internet access because of a single copyright infringement. Or what about the guy accused of copyright infringement for posting a clip of his own video from VH1 that Viacom used without his permission, but now has to fight criminal charges instead of a pesky take-down notice?

It makes me upset enough that simply signing a petition doesn't seem sufficient. One friend recommended that I assuage my anger by breaking from my normal Lawful Good(TM) mode and do copious amounts of pirating. While the offer is tempting, I think there are far smarter ways to fight back. Don't try to fight them with their rules -- play a different game entirely!

How about this? A big demonstration or festival (downtown Ann Arbor near campus?) where we hand out tons of Ubuntu CDs (don't forget Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and UbuntuStudio for all the art students), Knoppix, Fedora Core, Open Office and so on. We hand out free CD and DVD ripping software (to be used on legally-owned media, of course ;P ), and ogg converter software, and we promote music and movie downloading sites that don't use DRM. We invite bands who have openly opposed DRM (giving them a chance to sell their CDs and tee shirts, of course ;P), and we ask the EFF to help us with navigating the legal forms needed to get such a festival set up. We ask Cory Doctorow to speak -- of course ;P -- and Michael Geist.

And obviously informational booths on ACTA, copyright, and of *petitions* to sign that must accompany any Ann Arbor festival. :D

Any takers who know how to start the process for such a thing?

On a side note...why is it that a disproportionate number of people I know who are big champions of literary/music/digital freedom weren't born in the US?

Auto-Tune Explained

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:24:49 GMT

...With help from Professor Weird Al!

A Great Ruby-Based CD Ripper

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:25:34 GMT

From time to time I've tried to tackle the backup/conversion of my audio CDs into a more lasting and portable format than the heavy zippered case that hosts my music collection. I've been searching for quite some time for the perfect ripping software for my particular needs, and I think I have finally fulfilled my quest:

Rubyripper

This is a Ruby-based CD ripper that focuses on quality rips -- it makes a test rip of the file twice, and then compares them before making the final rip to minimise the errors. Even better, it's got a very intuitive interface that lets you choose the desired format with radio buttons, and set your own file naming conventions (with the options right on the screen that lets you set them, so you don't have to wade through online help files).

It's also very easy to edit track information before ripping. The only bad thing I've found so far is that it doesn't know how to rip to an already existing folder without overwriting it -- if you want to put two CDs into the same folder (e.g. a 2-disk set) you have to create a separate folder for the second disk, and then copy over the second set of files after ripping.

The application itself can either be installed, or run directly from its folder. I chose the latter and stuck it into an Apps folder on my hard drive, then created a shortcut to the main executable (rubyripper_gtk2.rb for Linux or rubyripper_cli.rb for Mac). To get the most out of this fantastic application, I highly recommend installing more than just the bare minimum requirements. The one downside to this application is that it doesn't have a Windows version...but I'm sure all the poor Windows users out there will make due with the numerous rippers already available to them. ;)

Atheists Have a Problem With What??

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:10:11 GMT

Two gold stars to the first person who can figure out the *huge* underlying assumption that is just wrong here, and explain why it's wrong with modern day examples. No, I'm not talking about the first sentence that says all animals reproduce sexually. I'm not even talking about the bad conflation of evolution with atheism. I'm talking about the blatant science mistake that obviously comes from believing the second creation story in Genesis, and which forms the entire basis for the article.

Pulling the Plug on Atheism: The Atheist's Problem With Females

Great Idea, Lord!

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:27:10 GMT

Hot Lesbian Vampires

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:06:48 GMT

The Turning from Victor Ramses on Vimeo.

It's probably one of the most erotic PG videos I think I've ever seen...Enjoy!

Creative Solutions in Linux

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:45:02 GMT

Imagine for a *brief* moment that you're really, really clutzy. Now let's just suppose for a moment that in your clutziness you bumped a tray table so hard that you sent a glass of water toppling over onto your nearby laptop.

Pretend that you let it dry overnight, and the next morning some of the keys on your keyboard don't work. You know you need to get it repaired (and let's just suppose that it's really hard to do it yourself because your laptop is a Mac), but you're not handing your precious laptop over to an untrusted stranger without some serious backup.

But you can't type...heck, you might not even be able to log in, because the particular configuration of non-working keys includes some of your password letters. And worst of all, you're far away from home and don't have your collection of USB keyboards that might work in a pinch.

What do you do?

1) Pull out your handy-dandy Ubuntu CD or USB stick, which you always keep tucked in your laptop case for emergencies such as this. Yay!

(Or Knoppix, or any other live CD that has a graphical interface. What's this? You don't have one on you? Then start here...although you may need to do this on another computer)

2) Plug in your backup drive, and boot into the live CD.

3) Go into the settings for your keyboard layout and change it to Dvorak.

If you're using Ubuntu 8.10, it's System -> Preferences -> Keyboard -> Layout). Hit the "+" to add a new layout, and look for United States Dvorak. Add it to your list, and select it as the default. Hit "Close".

Note: If you *already* happen to have your keyboard set to Dvorak, then flash your geek creds (c'mon, you know you want to), wipe that smug smile off your face, then switch to the QWERTY layout. ;P

4) Open up your trusty-dusty Dvorak layout gif that you keep saved on your hard drive...or just visit Wikipedia.

4) Open up a graphical text editor or a terminal -- anything you can put text that you can cut and paste -- and use it to enter any letters you really need, but can't get on your malfunctioned keyboard.

(Hopefully your bad keys don't include the A or M, because these are the same in Dvorak. If this does happen, you'll have to find creative ways to do avoid those letters in what you need to do.)

5) Leave the text editor or terminal open, but go back into settings and switch back to QWERTY. The original editor/terminal will remain in Dvorak mode as long as it stays open, but new ones will be in QWERTY.

If you're using a terminal, rely heavily on auto-completion of commands. Go back and forth between a Dvorak and a QWERTY terminal if necessary, cutting and pasting missing letters as needed. Or if you're doing everything via GUI interfaces, just cut and paste missing letters from the text editor.

6) Make any backups and take any additional security measures that you want before taking your laptop for repairs. Huzzah!

7) After all that trouble, take said laptop to Apple Store, find out they want to charge you an arm, a leg, and half your left earlobe. End up buying USB keyboard anyhow. :D

Don't need a jock, I want a spock

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:13:51 GMT

Be sure to stick around past the credits for the additional "geek" commentary....

Or if the embed above doesn't work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoP3C76ioTU

Quote of the Day

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:33:18 GMT

Life in Lubbock, Texas taught me two things:

one is that God loves you
and you're going to hell;

the other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on Earth
and you should save it for someone you love.

-- attributed to Butch Hancock, The Flatlanders

Ubuntu Server Frustration

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:50:10 GMT

Over the past week or so I've been talking about my server that I've been setting up to run Bespin and a custom hack to link it to subversion and run the edited code in a test environment. Unfortunately, that's fallen through. While Bespin is pretty spiffy in demo, I don't quite think it's ready for production deployment yet, so I think I'll wait for a more mature version before I try to use it again.

So I've been playing around with some other ideas to get this puppy up and running. My more recent ideas have been something like VNC or NX (which allow you to log into a full desktop environment remotely). These desktop environments would be very kiosk-like -- access only to a limited web browser, an IDE and text editor, and a graphical subversion client, in addition to a few custom scripts that can be run.

But that means installing a desktop environment on my server. Normally I would choose to go with Gnome, because I think KDE has sucked since it switched to 4 instead of 3.5. But KDE has a great kiosk manager interface, and Gnome just doesn't handle a custom kiosk setup well. Yes, they have Pessulus, which is supposed to be the Gnome equivalent of KDE's kiosk manager, but Pessulus can't even handle locking down Firefox. Even doing things manually, it seems most solutions to locking down Gnome require changing the permissions on files -- but what do you do if you want the user to be able to change one setting in a config file, and not another? Whereas KDE has a nice little [$i] that administrators can put next to any line in a global configuration file to say that users can't customize the feature mentioned in that line.

But for some reason 'apt-get install kubuntu-desktop' failed to get me a working kde environment. In fact, it freezes halfway through load no matter how many times I reboot. And now I'm stuck with another problem: I can't uninstall kde without figuring out everything that was installed and removing it by hand. That's the annoyance with a meta-package like 'kubuntu-desktop' -- it's a list of files that should be installed, but removing the package doesn't remove the files themselves, only the list. Annoying -- I've seen people complain about it since at least Ubuntu's Gutsy release, and no one has bothered to fix it.

The second problem is Python 2.6, which is what 9.04 comes installed with by default. This is actually more of a nightmare than it sounds. You see, right now CREM needs 2.5 to run, because it's current base (TurboGears 2) works best with 2.5. But Apache, virtualenv, and just about every tool I need for CREM insists on using 2.6 if it's available, whether or not it's the default, which causes things to break. There are manual ways to fix this, but Ubuntu likes to undo much of this hard work every time I install something new, and I'm tired of it.

So I will be saying goodbye to Ubuntu 9.04 and installing 8.10 as soon as the download completes. I might make an attempt at KDE, but XFCE also seems to have some desirable features, so I'll check that out as well. Wish me luck.

How to Change The Order of Your Thunderbird Email Folders

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:35:47 GMT

It has annoyed me for a long time that Thunderbird puts your email folders in the order in which you added the accounts, and there's no way to drag and drop them into a different order. Well, I've finally found a way to change that.

hacking it manually

Note that for Ubuntu users the file is '~/{username}/.mozilla-thunderbird/{string-of-numbers}.default/prefs.js'.

as an add-on

I wasn't particularly impressed with the add-on -- it made my inbox look a bit strange so I disabled it -- but I'm sure it will do the trick for people who aren't fond of manual editing. :)

What's Wrong With Anti-Racism

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:14:54 GMT

I grew up in an environment that might fall under the category "passively racist". We certainly didn't tell "people of color" to stay out of restaurants or churches, or send hate letters to the couple of black families and the one Muslim family who lived in town. We didn't even make "Black jokes" (although Polish jokes were okay).

But we were the ones who would pointedly seek out minority person and befriend them in a patronizing way to show everyone else how not-racist we were. We complained about "the blacks" (referring to urban poor people, not our "friends", of course) -- slavery was over; they've got the right to vote; so what's their problem? We thought that Southern American English was an acceptable dialect and didn't complain about the people who said "warsh", but constantly complained about this thing called 'Ebonics' that we'd heard about on the news.

And most of all, we prided ourselves on the fact that we *obviously* weren't racist, because we didn't do all those horrible things the KKK does...and of course that's all that racism is or can be....

But since moving out of my hick town, I've learned a lot. Perhaps a bit too much, because I've started to feel the embarrassment and guilt that many white people start to feel when they recognize the passive assumptions that contribute to problems with racism. It's more than a simple guilt over past behaviors; rather, it's a feeling of shame simply because of being white and not being oppressed in the same way that other people are. In more recent years, this feeling of guilt has been something intentionally cultivated by anti-racist movements.

Unfortunately, as I've experienced myself, the guilt tends to provoke a feeling of helplessness instead of any concrete action that might be taken to make the situation better. The reasons for this are fairly straightforward:

1) First the white person is told that they're racist and will always continue to be racist even if they've changed their previously racist assumptions.

2) All whites participate -- even unwillingly -- in a system that perpetuates the problem.

3) And whites aren't allowed to make any changes to the system themselves, because that would be patronizing. Only oppressed people are allowed to change the system

While there is a mild kernel of truth behind the last one¹, it's completely counterproductive to set people up in an "I'm a bad person, the world is bad, but I'm incapable of doing anything" position -- which is what anti-racism does. Even worse, it demands that white people *desire* to take on the role of the victim, to stop exercising any personal power and abdicate positions of authority, but then prohibits them from then feeling powerless or claiming the role of victim.

So I wanted to post this article that, while a little dated (from 1999), still has a lot of relevance:

What's Wrong with Anti-Racism, by Thankdeka

Of particular note is this line, which I think is a good analogy for why the concept of "white privilege" -- or at least how it's used, even if it's a valid term -- is antithetical to meaningful progress:

Imagine that business and government leaders decreed that all left-handed people must have their left hand amputated. Special police forces and armies are established to find such persons and oversee the procedure. University professors and theologians begin to write tracts to justify this new policy. Soon right-handed persons begin to think of themselves as having right-hand privilege. The actual content of this privilege, of course, is negative: it's the privilege of not having one's left hand cut off. The privilege, in short, is the avoidance of being tortured by the ruling elite. To speak of such a privilege -- if we must call it that -- is not to speak of power but rather of powerlessness in the midst of a pervasive system of abuse -- and to admit that the best we can do in the face of injustice is duck and thus avoid being a target.

My point is this. Talk of white skin privilege is talk about the way in which some of the citizens of this country are able to avoid being mutilated - or less metaphorically, to avoid having their basic human rights violated.

This explanation, in its own fashion, is permission for white people to stop punishing themselves simply for being white. It puts the ability to do something, to look for reasonable forms of action instead of inaction, back in the hands of willing allies.

-------------------------------------------------------------
¹ For example, when the NAACP first started, it was often necessary for most of its leaders to be white in order to take the kinds of legal actions necessary to make progress. However, in this day and age when blacks are no longer banned from going into a courthouse or legislative building, it would be patronizing to have an entire board of white people on the NAACP deciding what the best policies for black people are. Not that white people should never help, or never take positions of leadership in an organization like the NAACP. Like most things, there's a balance to maintain.

Factoid: Why Men Aren't Natural Protectors

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:15:37 GMT

I'm a bit of an insomniac at the moment (I've been obsessing about how to undertake the next phase of my server project), so I thought I'd post a little more on something I mentioned in my blog post yesterday in passing.

It's a fairly common belief that men are evolutionarily suited to be both hunters and protectors. While there is some very interesting research to support the former (including speculations that the male form of ADHD/ADD may have been an adaptive trait for hunting), there is actually more biological evidence to support women being more evolutionarily suited to be protectors, and not men.

For those of you who didn't plow through my rather long article, here are a few of the characteristics of women that make them particularly well suited to being protectors:

Women have better senses of smell and hearing, making them faster and better at detecting danger. In fact these heightened senses, combined with a thicker bundle of connecting tissues (the corpus callosum) between the two hemispheres of the brain to allow faster/more complete processing of subtle stimuli, may make up what we often think of as "women's intuition"¹.

They have faster reflexes than men, and their lower center of gravity make them more difficult to knock down in a fight.

Women have higher pain tolerances. Yes, this is obviously a necessity for childbirth, but it also serves to keep them going longer in a fight when the stakes are high.

And the big one that I mentioned in passing but didn't elaborate on was the adrenaline patterns:

Men release adrenaline like hunters; women release adrenaline like protectors.

Men's bodies release adrenaline almost immediately, which peaks and then drops off almost as quickly. This is a pattern conducive to hunting: spot the prey, react quickly, and then it's over. Women's bodies take slightly longer to release adrenaline and to hit the peak, then adrenaline levels remain elevated for hours afterward. This is a pattern geared to protection: get weaker members out of harm's way, then hit an adrenaline peak in time to turn and fight off the threat. Remain alert for a long period afterward to ensure that the threat (or a similar threat lurking nearby) doesn't return.

It's interesting to me that our bodies don't always match what we've come to believe is true culturally. Now that's not saying that biology is or should be determining -- we're an incredibly adaptive species, and as many studies have shown, the genetic differences between males and females are still relatively small².

So really, guys should be allowed to be protectors if they really, really want to...but they'll always have to live with the fact that they're biologically inferior for the job. ;P

-------------------------------------------
¹ I actually remember a great example of "women's intuition" from my childhood. I was out riding my bike, and I took a somewhat nasty spill about a block away from our house. My mom hadn't known what had happened, but something had just "told" her that something was wrong -- perhaps it subtle sound of children a block a way stopping their playing momentarily -- and she was sure it was me. She dashed out of the house before my dad could even ask where she was going, and was there before I could pick myself up off of the ground. She told me later that she didn't know how she knew -- I'm going to blame it on the heightened senses and corpus callosum. ;P

² Most studies find more variation within the genders than between the genders, and while differences are still statistically significant, they are generally small (for example, the paper that said men were better at math than women based on SAT scores, also found that the difference amounted to about one correct answer). It also gives a slightly different view from other nationalized or state testing, which shows that girls outperform boys in math up until junior high/high school -- and there are several social factors (like the perception that females who are good in math aren't attractive to boys) that have been noted to contribute to the switch. In fishing communities where girls can go to college but boys are expected to stick around and run the family boats, this switch doesn't occur.

Boys test slightly higher than girls on visual-spatial reasoning in Japan, but Japanese girls outperform American boys and the gap is wider between American boys and girls than it is in Japan. So it's a lot more complex than simply "boys are better at X, girls are better at Y" (or is that the other way around? ;P) For a good overview of children and gender testing, I recommend the book "Same Difference".

Sexism and the Nuances of Libertarianism

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:20:30 GMT

Today I stumbled across a post called "Where the men are" that got my hackles up a bit. As I'm sure many of you know, mention the phrase "gender role" and I'm likely to go on a rant, because I've spent a good chunk of my life feeling remarkably ill-suited to the roles generally attributed to my gender. Likewise, I've met a remarkable number of men whom I respect and like who would never fit the typical "manly" roles and struggled with the same issue growing up.

I generally expect a certain amount of sexism from conservative people. I grew up among such people, and as a result I have a lot of maladaptive conditioning that I've been trying to break for years -- reflexes like feeling uncomfortable in the presence of nudity, even though it doesn't ideologically bother me, or feeling rude for winning at a competitive game, even though I enjoy winning. (That last one has a funny story behind it. I used to play soccer on a team that was almost entirely boys because there weren't enough girls in the league to form a girls' team. I was more aggressive than many of the boys on my team and a good player because of it, but I took a lot of flack for it because I was a girl, and girls aren't supposed to be aggressive. So to make up for my "non girly" behaviour, I adopted the habit of saying "I'm sorry" every time I took the ball from someone -- this was when I was about 10 years old. :D )

But I've noticed that sexism in the form of advocating gender roles is also fairly prevalent among strong libertarians, which seems a huge surprise to me. I've always thought of libertarianism as the ultimate "I can choose to do/be what I want and I respect your right to do/be what you want", but today I realized that there is a nuance in libertarianism I've been missing for quite some time.

First, let me state right off that I don't think that all libertarians, or even most of them, are sexist -- I know many of them who aren't, just as a know a fair number of non-libertarians who are sexist. However, I have noticed a certain trend among strong advocates of libertarianism to use phrases like "real men", usually with a reference to women and small children needing protection showing up somewhere in the conversation.

Yes, that's sexism. If you look down on people because you don't think they're acting in ways appropriate to their allocation of genitalia -- e.g., everyone with a penis has a duty to protect the weaker members of society (implying that people with vaginas don't have the same duty, and that men aren't allowed to belong to 'the weaker members of society" but fully grown women are) -- it's just as sexist as the old idea that women aren't as intelligent as men and have a duty to stay home and raise babies instead of wasting time pursuing college degrees that wouldn't do their weaker minds any good anyways.

So how can you have a group of people who are exceptionally big on freedom and personal choice, but sneer at people who actually use that personal choice to be something other than their expected societal [gender] role? (This seems even more puzzling upon further reflection, because most libertarians I know take great pride in not following other societal norms...)

I think the answer lies somewhere in the nuances of the words "freedom" and "choice". Until today, I've always been confused at the difference between "social liberalism" and "social libertarianism". Yes, I know that liberals and libertarians are completely at odds when it comes to economic policies, but I couldn't quite grasp how there could be two different ways of viewing personal freedom: the government doesn't interfere with your personal life, end of story.

While I still think this attitude towards government generally holds for both "social liberalism" and "social libertarianism", what I was missing was the flip side: interference from other individuals. As a general rule, libertarians perceive something as being free as long as someone isn't using physical force to keep you from doing it ¹. Governmental pressures always count as physical force because even if the penalty is a fine (e.g. a parking ticket), the government can restrict your physical freedom (i.e., jail) if you don't pay it. For libertarians, social pressures don't count as interference, and even with extreme pressures everyone is considered to have a choice. Contrast this with liberals who believe that social pressures can be just as harmful (and sometimes more so) than actual physical threats.

The mottoes of the two groups might be summed up like this:

Social liberalism:"Personal lifestyle choices or innate traits of any given individual can't be punished or restricted by government, nor should they be regulated by other individuals"

Social libertarianism: "Personal lifestyle choices or innate traits can't be punished or regulated by the government, but individuals have the right to restrict the behaviour of others provided that they don't directly harm or coerce them."

(Bear in mind that these are stereotypical forms for compare/contrast purposes. Statements about what "liberals" or "libertarians" believe don't reflect any given member of the respective group, just general ideological trends.)

To illustrate this, consider a person who is an atheist. Both liberals and libertarians would agree that the government shouldn't be allowed to imprison someone for being atheist, nor should governemnt be allowed to attempt to "force" someone to convert by creating economic or other sanctions (e.g., restricting atheists to certain jobs, levying higher taxes on them, requiring that they attend psychological counseling or preventing them from voting). However, liberals say that individuals also can't do the same thing: employers can't fire someone for being an atheist; medical facilities (even religious ones) shouldn't be able to refuse a patient because of their beliefs. Libertarians say that an individual/company has the right to refuse to serve/hire someone, because the targeted individual can always in theory go somewhere else or change to meet societal norms.

This isn't a post about which perspective right or wrong -- on the contrary, I think that there's a fine balance between the two that has to be met. Rather, it's an exploration about what aspects of libertarian philosophy might allow for a component of sexism. Once again, let me iterate that this doesn't mean I think there are no sexist liberals. However, liberals are better known for taking enforcement *against* sexism even to extremes, rather than talking about how men aren't "real men" any more.

I don't have any hypotheses about why there is a tendency among strong libertarians for certain forms of sexism; but at least I now understand why libertarianism itself doesn't preclude it -- which liberalism does, simply because intolerance and prejudice are treated on the same level as physical or legal force, whereas in libertarianism only governmental force is treated as a valid interference to a person's freedom.

Now as a sub-post:

Thoughts on "Where the men are"

I think the article has a lot of underlying points that I agree with, but in the author's haste to pin it on a lack of manhood, I think the article misses the larger point: both men and women aren't being adequately prepared for adulthood, and it has nothing to do with "manliness". In fact, I'm sad that he attributes things like inner strength and poise as "manly virtues" that he thinks only a handful of women posses.

Actually, only a handful of men posses them too -- every generation rants about this problem (especially in the younger generations ;P). But in this case I think there is a phenomenon that's more than just the old ranting about the young. I think there's a cultural change happening in the desire to be self-reliant and in certain types of ambition. In many respects it's a breakdown in our culture that conditions people -- both men and women -- to be more helpless. I think why ESR is particularly noticing this trend in men is that while women have historically had these positive traits beaten out of them (sometimes literally, sometimes through other forms of conditioning), men have been traditionally encouraged and even required to develop things like self-sufficiency and bravery from a young age.

I know a lot of people think it's evolutionary, and there's probably something in our genes to that effect, but the chances to strengthen gender characteristics culturally provide more behaviour conditioning than evolution could ever hope to provide by itself. Take for example the concept of courage. As a child most of my friends were boys, although I did have several female friends as well. I remember a few times where one of my male friends would want to do something slightly risk-taking, like climbing up to the top of a barn or riding without hands standing up on a bike down a particularly steep incline -- and most of the time I didn't want to do it with them.

Now, if I were a boy, I would have been called a chicken and I wouldn't have been allowed to forget about it for weeks -- I saw it happen to other boys, who could be as initially reluctant as I was to follow suit. And if I had been a boy, I would have been eventually required to face up to my fears and develop that bravery if I wanted to keep my friends. But I was a girl. Oh, sometimes, they would call me chicken, but if any of their parents heard them they would get in trouble and it always ended then and there -- I sometimes think my friends came to believe that because I had this label "girl" that I was somehow physically incapable of doing what their parents called "boy things", and at some level I picked it up as well.

And I'm sad to say that I lost out because of it. Girls are just as capable of being brave (or stupid, depending on your perspective ;P) as boys. In fact, both genders should be encouraged to take risks, play with dangerous objects under reasonable supervision, and even learn how to hold their own in a fight. And yes, you will always have boys who are risk-averse or have no desire to be protectors, just as there are girls who think guns and knives are cool.

And I'm okay if it ends up that most boys and most girls still end up falling into stereotypical gender roles, if they've been given a chance to try both sides of the coin. Just don't be a jerk to those of us (men and women alike) who don't still fit the preconceived moulds. And don't give me crap about protecting women because babies are a scarce resource. First of all, A) Infant mortality is incredibly low in this day and age (and many countries have problems with overpopulation), and B) I can't tell you how many women -- particularly those who run in libertarian circles -- I've met who choose not to have children.

Besides which, since men frequently went off to war or on extended hunting trips (one tribe I studied sent hunting/mining parties as far as 2000 miles away), women frequently fell into the role of protecting the children and the elderly. Biologically, women are well adapted for it: women have better hearing, better senses of smell, and can't be knocked over as easily in a fight. Our adrenaline patterns are best suited for getting small children out of harm's way, and then turning around to take out the threat -- anyone who's seen a mad momma bear knows that the male isn't the scary one. Obviously *we're* the protectors, you're the hunters -- now go sit down and stop trying to take our biological roles. ;)

In regards to gun shows...I'm sorry, but gun shows are incredibly unwelcoming to women. Yes, I've been to one - I like guns and knives, and going to one can be fun if you can ignore the men there. No, the unwelcoming atmosphere isn't a "we don't want your kind" feeling; rather, it's a combined feeling of being an object of novelty that the guys want to poke at with a stick, and a piece of meat or a prize deer that someone would like to bag for a trophy. And many of the men are incredibly patronizing or a little too "friendly".

It's not the fact that I'm the only woman in a crowd of men. I'm used to that: I've played tuba since middle school, and in college I was in a marching bands with 17 other male tubas; I've done soccer and martial arts; I even chose the field of computer science. Yet none of my experiences can compare to what it feels like to walk into a gun show. Yes, I know there are plenty of women who enjoy gun shows -- but I think you have to be either pretty thick-skinned or oblivious not to find it an unwelcoming atmosphere (I think most gun-savvy women are the former and not the latter, by the way :D).

Final Thoughts

What actually sparked this post was a reply to blog entry by grendelkhan. The previous comments to the article had centred around the discussion of evolutionary biology as a justification for why men should fill the 'protector' role. The particular post I linked to was a continuation of other comments grendelkhan had made where he questioned the "biology, therefore society" conclusion:

I’m also a bit fuzzy on why folks seem to ready to take the jump from “there are good reasons in our past for double standards” to “these double standards should inform our present-day society, in the absence of those reasons”. Doesn’t that veer more than a little into is-ought confusion? (previous post -- not the one I linked to)

Whether you believe differences between men and women are caused by evolution or culture, the last point of his comment that I linked to is particularly relevant to libertarianism, and bears repeating:

Our ancestors had no concept of the nation-state, but our tendencies toward tribalism manage to map seamlessly onto following flags and symbols, or sports teams, or vague pronouncements using phrases like “where liberty dwells”. So, while we inherit plenty of behaviors (or at least tendencies that influence behaviors), we should bear in mind that the behaviors they influence today may not be very similar to behaviors they influenced in the past, and that claiming that they must be there for some good reason, hence we should build our societies around supporting and reifying them, is, at best, unsupportable.

While gender-specific traits are still hotly contested in academia, human tendencies toward hierarchy and authority are far more difficult to academically dispute. Our closest relatives, Pan troglodytes (the common chimpanzee) are so similar to humans in this regard that 'alpha male' is now part of common parlance (ESR even used the phrase himself earlier in the discussion). Our modern nation-states, which libertarians so detest, are a direct extension of these natural tendencies. True, they're not the only way we can organize ourselves -- but the fact is that almost every civilization above a certain population threshold (and it's not very high -- less than 1000 people) has generally turned towards centralized rulership. When that many cultures separated by entire continents and thousands of years of history follow the same pattern, it's a reasonably strong case for a biological basis.

Note that I'm not advocating that nation-states are biological *imperatives* any more than I think that different social roles for men and women are imperative. What I'm saying is that Grendelkhan has an incredibly pertinent point to make regarding sexism and libertarianism. If sexist libertarians accept the evolutionary biology argument as a justification for why "men must be men", then by the same logic they should also accept that evolution justifies maintaining national governments.

Yes, it can be argued that comparing years-long dominance of a single gorilla or chimpanzee until they're too old to maintain the position by physical/political ² force is nowhere near comparable to, say the Aztec Empire or the United States government. There's a lot of cultural choices that were made in between there, and that's what we can change. The same goes for sexism. Studies that male chimpanzees often give gifts to female chimpanzees to entice them to have sex don't justify why men have to be breadwinners in a relationship. And men don't hunt mammoths any more, just as feudal lords and castles no longer act as necessary protection to farmers in exchange for servitude. (Actually, men didn't really "hunt" mammoths so much as drove them off of cliffs by setting fire to nearby brush and scaring them into running in the wrong direction. Same with buffalo prior to the introduction of the domesticated horse to Northern America -- but that doesn't sound quite so heroic or dangerous, so I can see why "hunted" is frequently the image evoked. ;D )

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¹ I've always heard this definition and taken it at face value, until I started writing this paragraph. It then occurred to me that "no physical interference" requirement seems to be a bit nebulous. I've seen a couple libertarians scoff at people who have been beaten up for dressing the wrong way in a particular town or neighborhood, saying it's their "own damn fault" for not knowing better. Whether they should or shouldn't know better, it's still a form of physical interference preventing people from choosing their own dress code -- is the difference who is carrying it out?. If police officers beat a person up because they weren't following written dress code laws (e.g. a woman refusing to wear an abaya Iran), that's another example of why government is wrong, but if regular people beat someone up for unspoken dress codes (e.g., a person refuses to stop dressing like a "dyke" or a "queer" in a conservative town), it's the stupidity of the victim? I don't know, I'm still puzzling this one out...Back

² Yes, being top chimpanzee isn't just about physical prowess. Chimpanzees do political maneuvering that allow them to stay in power long after they're physically incapable of maintaining it. They manage to convince, bribe, or coerce other chimpanzees -- including females -- into keeping the would-be usurpers at bay. I highly recommend the book "The Ape and the Sushi Master" for a good non-technical introduction to primate behaviour (including humans ;P) Back

File Location Madness...eXtreme!

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 03:05:30 GMT

It's like a video game, except inode entries are getting bumped around instead of pinballs. Yay! :D

I'm a little goofy at the moment, because I've been trying like crazy to get Bespin running on a server under a hybrid custom application that I'm slapping together so that Matt and other members of the CREM development team can edit, test, and make commits to the repository from the web.

Don't ask me how I'll do it...I'm not even sure it will work. Perhaps some of you will be visiting me in a local insane asylum in a week or two.

However, while I take a break and ponder the futility of my undertaking, I wanted to share a thought regarding file location (or relocation), which seems to be the bulk of my troubles for the particular part of the task I'm working on.

You see, whenever you compile or install or configure anything, once you put it in place you really can't move it. Oh, you can sometimes set things up with relative paths, but that just allows you to move the root folder around -- you still can't move individual files.

So my idea is this: what if computers had the equivalent of a DNS server for their file system, but slightly smarter? Files have inode numbers, which might be likened to IP addresses, and folders could be 'zones', and in some other respects it kind of works like DNS already.

But here's how it might work differently: let's say that you have a file with inode number [4435] located at /usr/bin/test.sh and you move it to /usr/local/bin/test.sh. The inode 'DNS server' would first modify the reverse lookup to match the new location (i.e., looking up [4435] returns '/usr/local/bin/test.sh'). Then it would keep the old forward lookup ('/usr/bin/test.sh' returns [4435], until a new '/usr/bin/test.sh' file is created) and add an additional new lookup ('/usr/local/bin/test.sh' also returns [4435]).

There are definitely some drawbacks to this -- for example, simply moving a file won't stop a program from accessing it. However, if such a system were created, the applications that used it could be made inode-DNS-aware: the 'mv' command might have a '-d' option to move the file *and* delete the old forward lookup.

Yeah, I know, it's probably got a ton of other issues that I haven't considered. Perhaps it would put a huge strain on the system, create huge security holes -- who knows? But at 11:02 pm when I'm fighting with trying to figure out which config files need to be changed, DNS sounds fantastic! ;P

But We Don't Sell to Anyone Else

Tue, 12 May 2009 23:04:21 GMT

**Sings** At the Red House, where black people and white people buy furniture...

It's So Easy to Join!

Tue, 12 May 2009 22:37:53 GMT

I've found my new religion:

It even has an octopus, so I don't have to give up my worship of Great Cthulhu! Just say the prayer, and you're a Tarvuist!

Wheee! Wiiii! Nope, not this time...

Tue, 12 May 2009 20:53:11 GMT

I just got a Wii Fit, and fortunately I didn't have to pay for it. Instead, I received it as repayment for helping a friend wrack up a bunch of points on a chain store gaming card.

"This is awesome!" I said, as I opened the package and proceeded to pop in the disk. I carefully read the instructions and synced the platform with my Wii console. Then I waited for the fun to begin.

And then I waited some more. And I'm still not sure when the amazing fun is supposed to begin. On the contrary, I'm beginning to believe that Wii Fit was a heinous plot to force people into unusually sadistic scenarios that they feel they have to endure because the word "Fit" is on the outside of the box.

I'm no stranger to sadism in fitness -- after all, I willingly used to run 6-10 miles a day and play team sports wearing skimpy uniforms while it snowed or hailed. But Wii Fit surpasses any measure I previously had, because it requires you to willingly sit through verbal abuse, guilt trips you into doing boring activities, and to add insult to injury asks you to pay for the privilege to do so.

It reminds me vaguely of going to a professional domme in order to receive jollies, except I don't usually go in for that kind of thing.

Here's how my first few days of Wii Fit have gone:

I pressed the start button, and climbed onto the platform expectantly. However, Wii Fit immediately slapped my wrist. "Don't do anything until I tell you to. Step down this instant." No sooner had I stepped down, than Wii Fit commanded me, "Get up on the platform. Why aren't you there already? C'mon, don't keep me waiting..."

I eyed Wii Fit warily, but climbed on, expectant that now I had pleased Wii Fit, it would be ready to give me some fun. But it was not to be.

Wii Fit: You're lazy, and you slouch. You obviously need to follow a regular routine of exercise, or you wouldn't have bought me in the first place. No, don't even *think* of fast-forwarding through my lecture.

Me: But why are we wasting time with this? I just wanted to play games that give me a small amount of exercise, like DDR.

Wii Fit: Shut up, slave. What am I, not good enough for you? Don't ever mention that slut DDR's name again! You're way too cocky -- we need to knock you down a few pegs. Step on the platform, now!

Me: But Mistress Fit, I'm already on the platform...

Wii Fit: Did I ask you to talk back to me? And you will address yourself as "Mii" from now on.

Mii: *Mumbling* Yes, Mistress Fit.

Wii Fit: Good. First, I'm going to show you how bad your posture is. Stand with your feet apart and don't move.

Mii: Wow! That's pretty good. My center of balance is almost perfect according to your little chart there.

Wii Fit: Not good enough! It's not perfect; therefore you are a bad slave! Kiss my feet. Now let's look at how much of a fat slob you are. My god, look at your BMI! You're a whale! How do you manage to stand?!?

Mii: But Mistress Fit, BMI isn't a good indication of fitness -- I mean, even when I could run a 6:30 mile, my BMI was just barely low enough to hit 25.

Wii Fit: I make the rules around here, slave, and you better learn that. I can also see by these balance tests that I just put you through without any training on how to use the board that you're clearly someone who could fall over at any minute. It's amazing you can even walk!

Mii: But Wii Fit, I've actually been told in several martial arts classes that I have fairly good balance...

Wii Fit: Address me as *Mistress* Fit when you speak to me! And why are you speaking to me when I haven't asked you a question?? Now set your weight goals. I don't care if you don't want to make any goals. I won't let you do any of my activities until you tell me how much weight you want to lose to get you closer to my goal of a 25 BMI for you.

Reluctantly, I played the dutiful slave, in the hopes that once I had gone through her requirements, she would finally reward me with pleasure. Instead, she fell flat on all her promises. The yoga was nothing more than individual poses that had to be clicked on one at a time, instead of the customizable routines that I've actually seen on other platforms.

All the "games" were a joke, and almost nothing would be available until I had put in enough time to "unlock" other activities. And in some cases this meant doing the same boring 1-minute "games" over and over to get Wii Fit to unlock another boring 1-minute game.

Oh, and Mistress Fit would keep torturing me by only unlocking activities that I wasn't particularly interested in. "You spend most of your time in aerobics? Here' I'll unlock a new strength training exercise. Have a few yoga poses too. How about a balance game? Wait...you've switched to balance games? I'll unlock a few more strength training poses for you. But I won't unlock a new aerobics activity...bwahahahah!"

Wii Fit has this stupid scoring system where you have to compete with everyone else on your own fitness abilities -- whether you like it or not. The points awarding system is beyond me, and when I try to do the jogging "game" she can't even tell how fast I'm running. And there is no way to manually enter other physical non-Wii activity that you do...say going for a walk or playing DDR ["You will have no other mistress but me, you insolent slave!"].

All in all, the Wii Fit experience is very aptly summed up by this parody commercial:

I love the Wii console -- it's fantastic. But Nintendo really bombed on this one. Anyone want to buy a Wii Fit off of me?

Awesome Granny

Sun, 10 May 2009 20:58:18 GMT

It's kind of weird -- and fun -- the things that you learn when you stop to ask questions about people around you. I called my granny up for Mother's Day, and we got onto a conversation about some of her old hobbies. She used to tape record books for blind people long before books on tape were readily available. Come to find out, she also used to be certified in braille.

Even cooler, my granny transcribed two books into braille that are in the Library of Congress.

Kick ass! That beats the story of my aunt who starred in a Jello commercial. :)

Dr. Who and Tegan Too!

Sun, 10 May 2009 01:38:24 GMT

Well, except that "Dr. Who" is more like a photographer who travels the world instead of a Time Lord who travels through space and time, and "Tegan" is far cooler than the original, in my opinion.

Yes, I just came back from the most awesome wedding. I have two phrases for you: "Dalek cake" and "Tom Smith live". "Clergy in kilt" is also a good one.

Fantastic Room Service

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:38:29 GMT

I just came back from a trip to the Washington, DC area, and I had a remarkable experience at one of those extended stay hotels that are set up as small suites with kitchenettes. Here's a brief excerpt from their promotional material:

"We make sure that your stay with us is as perfect as you imagined it. That's why we provide our guests with extra service and extra amenities..."

...Including a sleeping naked stranger waiting for me in my bed, apparently.

As I walked into the room, I noticed something distinctly odd about the table: it held a pack of cigarettes, some keys, and loose change. "How odd," I thought. "Someone must have forgotten to take their things when they left this morning."

Then I turned as a bleary-eyed man suddenly sat up from the bed nearby and stared at me with confusion. He wasn't wearing much, and with shock and embarrassment I beat a hasty retreat to the front desk. Apparently my reservation had accidentally been given to someone else.

I asked for a new room with fewer 'amenities'. ;P

Holodeck Marriage

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 09:46:45 GMT

I recently read a story by Tim Pratt called A Programmatic Approach to Perfect Happiness. I'm not sure whether to walk away from it with an overwhelming feeling of excitement, or a bit of a shiver (given the last few moments of the story).

However, reading this story also sparked another thought when watching the Star Trek:TNG episode "11001001". I won't give spoilers about the plot itself, but after an upgrade of the Enterprise's systems, the holodeck manages to generate a female character that is so real and believable that Riker falls in love with her. He mentions several times that she is unlike any holodeck character he's ever met before, because she's remarkably perceptive and has more spontaneous, human-style responses.

And then the thought occurred to me: if it's okay to marry sentient androids, why not someone from a holodeck? Obviously the holodeck isn't real in any physical sense, unlike embodied human-level AI, and I think that tends to make us dismissive of whether or not such a relationship could genuinely be real. Before reading the story mentioned above, I don't even think I would have considered it.

I know it's the classic Turing test, the "If it walks like a duck and looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, is it a duck?" question. But if an android can be credited with sentience, why can't an individual character on the holodeck also be sentient and capable of forming a human-style relationship?

What would such a relationship be like, I wonder? [And in the case of a female holodeck AI, it might even be possible to have holodeck children! Heck, the holodeck can simulate some pretty interesting physical experiences -- could a human female get the experience of being pregnant and have holodeck children as well?]

...Oh! Apparently the latter is possible: "Simulations can also be projected inside living organisms, including that of pregnancy." -- from Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki.

Uncaffinated Freak of Nature

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:50:12 GMT

This morning's quirky dialog is brought to you care of Spotlight® Whole Bean Coffee -- tastes so great, you'd almost think it was excreted from an Asian Palm Civet.

[The curtain opens with Matt Arnold bending over his espresso machine]

Matt: Would *you* like some coffee?

Me: No, I think it's too early in the morning for coffee.

Matt: ...wait, what??

[Stunned silence as an almost horrified look passes across Matt's face]

Me: You do know that caffeine sometimes puts me to sleep, right?

[Another pause]

Matt: Mutant freak!!!

[Matt runs screaming from the room. The network cuts to a jingle for antacids...]