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December 28, 2005

MSB (Mainstream Blog) Roundup

The continuing and absolutely vital free wifi in airports meme (aka the "Doc" Searls Invitational Meme)
Your content = mashup. My content = theft.
Wikipedia is about emergence, not about being a reliable source of information, you nasty little information elitist-priests. I still won't edit my own bio, though - it wouldn't be right.
Well, at least the podcasting article is accurate. Whoops.

December 24, 2005

Little Red Correction.

Well, as it turns out, the Little Red Homeland Security Visit was indeed a hoax:

NEW BEDFORD -- The UMass Dartmouth student who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security agents over his request for "The Little Red Book" by Mao Zedong has admitted to making up the entire story. The 22-year-old student tearfully admitted he made the story up to his history professor, Dr. Brian Glyn Williams, and his parents, after being confronted with the inconsistencies in his account.

No real indication in the story as to why the little nimrod pulled this stunt, but I feel sorry for this poor professor:

"I wasn't involved in some partisan struggle to embarrass the Bush administration, I just wanted the truth," he said...

Dr. Williams said the whole affair has had one bright point: The question of whether it is safe for students to do research has been answered.
"I can now tell my students that it is safe to do research without being monitored," he said. "With that hanging in the air like before, I couldn't say that to them."

So, is this professor going to get the usual "seditious vitriol-filled Bush-hating commie needing to be taken out back and shot, then strung up and set on fire, oh wait" treatment? If I were him, I'd want to murderlize this kid for stringing me out like this over a lie.

December 22, 2005

Service Scrubber

Via mph, Service Scrubber:


With Service Scrubber, you can:

* restructure the services menu
* change service keyboard shortcuts
* disable services

I've been headscratching over the services menu for some time now. I have not been able to determine which particular Mac OS X hoodoo file I need to edit to get rid of them, and now I have a shiny gooey utility-thing to handle it for me! Yay computer priesthood!

OK, 2 things still:

1. How come applications I am no longer using still stick stuff in the services menu?

2. How come in the one application where the services menu might be of some use to me, namely Firefox, nearly the entire services menu is greyed out? Firefox is doing something non-Mac-like, obviously, since the other services menu hack I use, Devon's HotService, doesn't work with Firefox either. Anyplace I can go to read up on the services thing?

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December 20, 2005

Me neither.

New SCAL meme: heartfelt declarations about how you will never, ever edit your Wikipedia entry. Unless you're boingboing egonova Cory "Haircut" Doctorow of course. (You need to show a picture to get a short back and sides?)

Don't miss the comment by a boingboing pal/winged monkey defending the right of the ubermensch to edit his own entry, based on celebrity euphemism "notability." Also includes one standard anonymity callout, though stopping short of recycling yet again the tired WELLfucker canard "You own your own words."

December 19, 2005

Know your OPAC.

Boing Boing: DHS agents visit student over "Little Red Book" loan -- hoax?:

A followup to the previous post on the DHS student visit: the story is making its way round the boogersphere, and over at boing boing they appear to have at least one reader who susects a hoax, one of his points being:

3. It seems a little unlikely that UMass Dartmouth wouldn't have the Little Red Book on Campus.

A search of UMass Dartmouth's OPAC reveals that they indeed don't have the Little Red Book in their holdings. They don't even have it in translation, let alone the original which the student requested via ILL.

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December 18, 2005

Did you request this book, sir?

Agents' visit chills UMass Dartmouth senior: 12/ 17/ 2005:

NEW BEDFORD -- A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book."
Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program.
The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.

Via Orcinus. I happened to read this after having been to a party last night at which we discussed the NSA domestic spying flap. To my surprise some of the guests were unperturbed by the idea of the government playing secret police with its own citizens. Someone uttered that old canard "If you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?" Well, here's what you have to worry about. This is frightening on several different levels: interlibrary loan being monitored by the feds, particular books being on "watch lists," the feds intervening in said interlibrary loan process. Incidentally, the feds brought the book with them and then left with it. "I couldn't finish my paper because Federal agents ate my one of my cites." It really has come down to that Nixonian saw: "If the president does it, it can't be illegal."


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December 16, 2005

BBC Vegan Xmas

BBC - Food - Vegetarian and vegan - Vegan Christmas menus:

Tasty-looking recipes (I will never, ever, use the word "yummy." (Whoops) I despise it.) I was in Integral Yoga yesterday and saw some UnTurkeys for sale, in 2 sizes, no less. They looked much bigger than the Tofurkys. Plus they featured "Crispy soy skin," which is a little disconcerting if you think about it too much. Anyone (you in the back there) ever try these? A vegetarian friend of ours says that Tofurky is "horrible." I'm fine with fake meats, though I know a lot of vegans think they send the wrong message (see "vegan purity" post above.) I'm not looking for philosophical debate, this is strictly on the merits.

Vegan grownups

Satya Sept 05: Why Honey Is Vegan by Michael Greger:

Our position on honey therefore just doesn’t make any sense, and I think the general population knows this on an intuitive level. Veganism for them, then, becomes more about some quasi-religious personal purity, rather than about stopping animal abuse. No wonder veganism can seem nonsensical to the average person. We have this kind of magical thinking; we feel good about ourselves as if we’re actually helping the animals obsessing about where some trace ingredient comes from, when in fact it may have the opposite effect. We may be hurting animals by making veganism seem more like petty dogmatic self-flagellation.

I can tend to see things in very stark terms, most of which I attribute to my solidly bourgeois New England Catholic upbringing. Catholicism, if you take it seriously (and I took it very seriously) instills a fervent desire for purity, a yearning for a world where ambiguity is banished. So a lot of times I can be pretty dogmatic (hey, dogma!) about veganism. I spent a lot of time wondering whether or not I could really call myself a vegan when I was not entirely leather or wool-free (which state of affairs continues to the present day.) Yet "dietary vegan" or "total vegetarian" sound stupid. Not to mention that using "total vegetarian" in restaurants generally means they'll put cheese on everything. A lot of vegans put too much emphasis on the right reasons for being vegan. The health benefits are not enough. So it's a relief to read an article like this, reminding me that you don't have to be a wild-eyed self-righteous academic radical to do some part towards reducing, if not ending, animal suffering. If this means that I am not willing to go the final mile and eschew Guinness entirely because of the isinglass, well, so be it. I already annoy any number of my friends and family already by my refusal to eat dairy.

But I still draw the line at "humane killing" and "pesco-vegetarians."

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Lispbookmania!

DeliciousWeb:
Bill Clementson puts his Lisp library online (well, the covers at least) via Delicious Library. Pretty cool. I'll definitely spend some time on this.

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Ellen does good

Cycling Articles and News from SpokePost.com:

Fuji Bikes was recently selected as one of the premium holiday giveaways on leading daytime talk show, the Ellen Degeneres Show.

Take that, Oprah. When I heard about the car giveaway, the first thing I said was "She shoulda given away bikes." Honest, I did. Via Cyclelicious.

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December 14, 2005

Locally and humanely killed.

What constitutes humane treatment? - megnut.com:

I admit some bias towards the issue as I adore foie gras, but honestly, banning its production on humanitarian (animalitarian?) grounds? That's a slippery slope for legislatures to proceed down, and one that I'm not entirely opposed to. But I'd hope for some consistency, what about more regulations for humane treatment of chickens and cows? American factory farming is hardly more humane than family-farm foie gras production.

Yet another go at the "humane killing" windmill. When people use this "humane treatment" argument, is it from some sort of supposed feeling for animals, or is it because of the health risks to humans of "inhumane" treatment? (You know, fecal contamination, bacterial infections, unsanitary conditions etc etc. All that stuff. ) It can't be feeling for the animals, because you really can't get much more inhumane than killing them. If it's the health risks, well, at least you're being honest, but drop the "humane" crap. Don't try to make it sound like you're all concerned about animal treatment. See first reason above.

Flatly, if you're going to kill something[1] and eat it, then hoping that it cavorted happily in grassy sun-dappled pastures before it rode the lazy river in your colon for a few hours is really kind of besides the point.

[1] Or "cause it to be killed on your behalf" for all you "plants feel pain" sophists out there.

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Well, you asked.

Halley's Comment: Conferences:

Is it me, or are they all getting to feel exactly the same? Same players, same venues, same ideas.

It's you.


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Ray Dee Oh Ray Dee Oh

WFMU's Beware of the Blog: Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 2:

Go read this, it's interesting. That being said, let me now start another interminable rant.

WFMU's blog actually makes me glad that blogs were invented, because it really represents the kind of authentic, interesting, alternative culture created by people who are actually driven by their own curiosity. If you read that post I linked above, you'll find something much different from the way this story would be covered in boing boing or Make. Those places would be self-conscious to the point of annoyance, full of encomiums to their own amazing quirky hipness and retro-tech-fashionista taste. I'm less and less interested in the relentless coolfucking and self-promotion I see on the web than I am in seeing something that actually looks like some alternative culture that's being produced by interested, truly eccentric individuals. FMU's blog is the best example of that I've seen.

Disclaimer: I own a WFMU Chris Ware t-shirt. How half-assed am I?

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O Tannendork

Wayfaring Map - Christmas Trees in New York City:

Kids, if you need a map to find a Christmas tree in NYC, you really need to put the keyboard down for a good, long while. When I lived in Manhattan, you could go out for a cup of coffee and pass six corners reeking of balsam and pine before you even got to the diner. Most amusing was the comment that people should put in prices (Froogle for Xmas trees!) and, wait for it, whether or not they deliver. Hey, maybe they'll decorate it for you, too, Sparky! Talk about your solution in search of a problem.

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