Back in the Spring, my office had an offsite retreat which included a presentation on the Intellipedia, a version of Wikipedia used by the U.S. intelligence community.
One of the reasons the intelligence community needs a tool like Wikipedia is the volume of information they deal with. The presentation started off with a video titled “Information R/evolution.” It’s kinda cool.
All posts by dividingbyzero
Ahoy There!
Today be Talk Like a Pirate Day, I hope ye be celebratin’ accordingly.
If nothin’ else, ye can be switching your website to use the Piratespeak generator. (It’s a one line change.)
Status Update
From my Linked-In profile:
Blair Learn is diving into Java, J2EE, JBoss and other things starting with a J.
Skirting the Issue
Dave’s been having fun the past few years, telling his daughters all sorts of stories about their various uncles. More recently, he’s posted a story or two on his blog.
I suppose I could respond with a story or two of my own, for example, when he was a foreign exchange student, he returned from New Zealand in January. My then-girlfriend and I went with my parents to meet him at the airport and when Dave got off the plane, he was wearing a skirt. (The girlfriend broke up with me a short time later.) I could go into great length about that, but why? After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.
So you see, it turns out that I’m the normal one!
Executive Order
THE WHITE HOUSE
From the Office of the President
September 15, 2009
EXECUTIVE ORDER
WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS COMMUNICATIONS POLICY
From the Office of the President
September 15, 2009
EXECUTIVE ORDER
WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS COMMUNICATIONS POLICY
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, effective immediately, there is to be no use of Twitter in the Press Briefing Room.
BARACK OBAMA
THE WHITE HOUSE
September 15, 2009
OK, seriously, I don’t believe for a moment that President Obama will ever issue an executive order like that one. I likewise hope there won’t be an unofficial equivalent, but… Wowsers. You just know there’s gotta be a temptation….
If you’ve somehow missed the uproar, sometime on Monday, during an “off the record” moment before a television interview, President Obama called Kanye West “a jackass.”
It’s been a bad couple of months for civility and politeness in this country. A summer full of “town hall meetings” being disrupted by people who instead of answers only wanted to cause a scene. Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouting at the President of the United States during a formal address. Rapper Kanye West grabbing the microphone away from Taylor Swift to protest Beyoncé not winning the award that went to Taylor (Yay to Beyoncé for putting Taylor back in the spotlight). And now the President of the United States referring to someone as a Jackass.
There is one important distinction though. The first three took place in public settings where the people involved should have been mature enough to realize in advance that their actions were wildly inappropriate. They should have restrained themselves and made their protests in a more appropriate manner.
In the case of President Obama, I’m a bit less certain. There are undoubtedly parents and teachers out there who now have to explain to the kids that just because President Obama used a word doesn’t mean it’s OK for them to use it too.
But although President Obama’s choice of words was unfortunate (it certainly could have been worse), was he wrong to say it? That’s where I’m not sure. Somebody made an audio recording of the President’s remarks, and from the context, it’s clear that the remarks were “off the record.” It was a private, informal conversation. (And hey, what’s up with recording a private conversation?)
The reporter, Terry Moran of ABC News, posted the report on Twitter and then realized it wasn’t something he should have been reporting. He then removed the Twitter post. Both Moran and ABC seem to believe that this was something which shouldn’t have been reported on, but with more than 1,000,000 followers, by the time Moran moved to delete it, the post had already been forwarded on.
Whatever else this may be, it’s most certainly a vivid reminder that when you’re talking to the media, you’re never completely off the record and you need to watch what you say (particularly with “instant news” as with Twitter). In general, the reporter has no way of separating personal musings from an official statement and may very well report the parts of the conversation that you least wanted. (This is a lesson I learned the hard way a few years back.)
And maybe now would be a good time for everyone, whether they’re in the limelight or out, to take a deep breath, look up the definitions of “civility” and “politeness”, and use them to start making the world a better place.
(Updated 9-16-2009, 8pm — Corrected Terry Moran’s News Organization.)
Ender's Game
Last week I re-read Ender’s Game. Excellent book, though I have trouble suspending my disbelief to the extent of buying in to the idea of kids under the age of 10 discussing such deep topics. I’m left assuming that Ender and his peers were the result of a program aimed at producing geniuses, but such is never actually stated. Despite this quibble, the book is all in all a most excellent read. (This would be a great opportunity to include a link to the extra copy I put on PaperBackSwap, but it was gone within 24 hours.)
The idea of Locke and Demosthenes makes some degree of sense within the context of the book, and I can sort of imagine a variation of Peter’s gambit playing out in the scope of today’s blogosphere. (There are after all a few “superstars” out there, but they’re mostly bloggers, not commenters.)
Through a fluke of excellent timing, I finished reading Ender’s Game on Monday and on Friday, XKCD had a strip based on one of Valentine’s and Peter’s discussions. (The squirrel in the strip fared much better than any of the ones in the book however.)
The Comment of the Beast
About five or six months ago, I was surprised to note that the number of comments on Dividing by Zero had reached the point where there were more comments than posts. I haven’t really been paying attention to the number of comments since then. Tonight though I just happened to take another glance at the numbers:
As of this evening, Dividing by Zero has received six hundred and sixty-six comments, 666.
So what was “The Comment of the Beast”? Well, it came in response to the post about The Eastern Setter when Luke wrote in to say, “when i die, i wanna come back as an Eastern Setter.”
It’s a sentiment I can certainly understand. Take a look through those photos and you’ll see that Wylie’s surrounded by a lot of pretty girls. He’s the neighborhood rock star after all and chicks dig the fuzzy guy.
It’s ironic that Luke should be the person who left comment #666 though. He’s in seminary and can tell you in far more detail than I can about how all dealings with the devil come with a great deal of peril. You might manage to get exactly what you asked for, but there’s always going to be a vital detail you didn’t think of.
In those photos, Wylie is getting his back skritched by pretty girls, and what guy wouldn’t like to be in that situation? But here’s the detail Luke overlooked: Wylie has been fixed.
The Eastern Setter
Ol’ Wylie is pretty much the neighborhood rock star. When we go out for our regular after-work walk, the neighborhood kids frequently flock to his side. The kids inevitably want to pet Wylie, and many remark on how soft his hair is. (He uses shampoo with extra-conditioner.)
One of the most frequent questions the kids ask me is what kind of dog Wylie is. They’re never satisfied with “I don’t know” so I’ve tried variations such as “Black” or “He’s a Wylie.” None of those work either. Some Wylie-historians claim that Wylie is an Irish Police Dog from Scotland Yard, but Wylie insists that this is a gross exaggeration and he only ever worked with a small constabulary on the outskirts of Dublin.
So far though, Wylie hasn’t been willing to discuss his origins. Until now.
Earlier this week, Wylie and I were talking about the problem with the kids not accepting any of the standard answers. He admitted that it always bothered him to be putting me on the spot like that, so he’s decided to share his secret with the world:
Wylie is an Eastern Setter.
For those unfamiliar with the particulars of this breed, the Eastern Setter is native to North America with a range covering the mid-Atlantic states, going North into New England and as far West as Indiana.
Here we see the Eastern Setter in his natural environment — setting on the couch.
Likewise, here we see the Eastern Setter in another of his favorite settings — setting on the deck, getting his back skritched by a pretty girl.
And again, the Eastern Setter, setting on the couch, getting his back skritched by two more pretty girls. (It’s truly a dog’s life!)
Batteries not included.
My car’s check engine light came on again late last week. This time it was accompanied by the IMA light. IMA means “Integrated Motor Assist” or, translating from Honda to English, “The part that makes is a hybrid.”
I took it to the dealership this morning and they called me around 1:30 or so with the diagnosis. The battery needs to be replaced. Not the run-of-the-mill battery for starting the gas engine (that was replaced last fall). This time it’s the one located in the trunk, right behind the back seat, which provides the extra “oomph” when I’m accelerating.
Then I found out the cost. Around $4,000.
Ouch. (Have I mentioned that the car has 100,000 miles on it and is thus been out of warranty by 20,000?)
I don’t understand the details, but for whatever reason (possibly because they want people to buy their hybrid instead of the better known one from Toyota), Honda is going to give me the battery for half of what they paid for it, but that still comes in at $1,600 plus labor.
It’s not as bad as it might have been, but it was still enough to make me wonder whether getting a hybrid was really worthwhile after all.
Some quick back of the envelope numbers….
Assuming $2/gallon (definitely a lowball figure since Katrina hit in 2005), $1,600 would buy 800 gallons of gas. If a regular Civic gets 30 MPG, that would be enough to move it about 24,000 miles.
My car has been averaging about 46 MPG, so with 100,000 miles, I’ve used a little less than 2,200 gallons of gas over the past 6 years.
Using that same amount of gas, a regular civic would have only gone 66,000 miles. Add in the 24,000 miles worth of gas you could buy for the cost of the new battery and my car’s still ahead by 10,000 miles.
The oil changes cost more, but they’re less frequent than with a conventional engine, so we’ll call that part a wash.
The hybrid did cost more than a regular civic. I don’t recall the exact amount, but I remember that the various tax incentives (no state sales tax, $2,000 federal deduction) made a serious dent in it. (A dent in the cost please, not the car!!)
So I can’t be completely certain, but I think I came out ahead by at least enough to buy a celebratory dinner at McDonald’s.
Plus, I get a fairly huge number of geek points for buying a hybrid back in 2003, long before the gas prices went up.
So yeah, the hybrid wins. 🙂
Dog Park
In order to shake up the routine a bit (and Lord knows, the routine needs shaking), I’m planning to take Wylie to the dog park this weekend. In order to avoid any scheduling conflicts, I asked Wylie what he thought of the plan.
Wylie’s response was, “‘Dog Park’? I was thinking ‘toga party’, but sure, the Dog Park would be fun too.”
I have to admit, Wylie’s idea would definitely shake things up, but with Talk Like a Pirate Day coming up the following weekend, I’m not sure throwing a party this weekend is practical.
It does go to show however that some things never change.