• Eat Me
• SKULLFUCK
• STAYOUT
• SonjaCan’tDoComputers

1. More graffiti! I know that sounds counter-intuitive but when you think about most graffiti as being territory markers then you start to see it as someone’s personal calling card. So the idea is when you wake up in the morning to find some fresh graffiti you add something like “eats ass” to it and then have the police wait that night for the tagger to fix the amendment. Cost is fairly low for the extra spray paint, and the wall already needed repainting so no extra cost there. The main cost comes from the stakeout and the social cost of having obscene message in highly visible areas. Chance of success? Probably not very high. I don’t see a lot of back and forth when rivals deface their tags so why should a little insult matter to them?
2. Video cameras. Basically this is the obvious appraoch where businesses would have tog et video cameras, mount them in a hidden or out of reach area, and make sure it’s high enough resolution so the perpetrator can actually be identified. The problem here is that video cameras like that are expensive, they are easily defeated with masks or just taken out directly.
3. RFID tags. I came up with this when I decided video cameras were too expensive but it involves more infrastructure. First you need to get spray paint makers to put RFID tags in the cans, then when you show your driver’s license to buy your spray paint the RFID gets linked to your driver’s license number. Business owners need to buy a series of readers (about $20 each) to monitor the taggable parts of their building and when graffiti happens they can get the RFID that did it and give it to the police. The downsides to this plan are privacy concerns about purchases being tracked. Also the RFID signals can be blocked but then a tagger has to carry around jamming equipment which I don’t think is very likely; tagging seems be somewhat a crime of convenience.
4. Honey pot. I just thought of this one last week after seeing another under-construction building tagged. Incomplete buildings always seem like a good target. An incomplete house will be tagged but a completed house gets avoided, though fences always seem to be fair game. So the idea is to find an empty lot and put up some very cheap non-permanent pre-fab structure. Then use a stakeout or  cameras to catch those that show up to do their tagging.

Any other ideas?

Well a co-worker was nice enough to drop me off at the corner on their way home and I was told that I couldn’t cross to my house because it was all a crime scene. I told them I lived one house away but that didn’t help and said I could go home if I could find a way into my yard without them seeing me. I thought about crossing behind my neighbor’s house but I would still have to cross to my house in view of the street and I didn’t want to have the cops irritated at me. So I called Nicole and told her the details I heard a sheriff tell the camera man from fox-35/kion-46 who was there filming and asking questions. I decided to ask how long they thought it would be.

When I asked another sheriff how long he thought it would be he asked if I was the taxi guy and I said I was. He went to check but he got caught up in helping the CSI. T alked to the camera man for awhile, learned that channels 35 and 46 share a building and that his footage goes to both of their stations. I also learned that kion-46 is owned by Clear Channel but that it is up for sale as Clear Channel is trying to sell off all their tv stations. I learned that they used dogs to track the suspects to Dougmar, a street off the opposite side of the block, that there was a bullet lodged in teh house directly across the street from ours, that the victim was in critical-critical condition which I think means they weren’t expecting him to live and indeed he died at 1AM.

After more chatting and watching the ksbw-8 reporter show up without a camera man and just trying to make due with a digital camera the sheriff returned and I asked again if I could make it to my house. He decided I could cross my neighbor’s yard in front while he paralleled be on the sidewalk. About halfway across the CSI questioned why I was there and he explained for me that it was ok and I had been waiting patiently (for about an hour and a half) as I crossed the dividing picket fence between our yards.

The block was closed off for almost 8 hours, ending at about half past midnight.

Last night on the way to the store sheriffs on foot approached us as we were about to go to the store and they asked Nicole about everything she might know to establish timelines. When we got back from the store they were still canvasing the neighborhood.

Today in the paper I learned that the shooter was 16 and they are working on charging him as an adult.

Republicans:

I  haven’t really kept up to date with the Repuiblican candidates except blurbs I hear in the news. I knew next to nothing about Huckabee, Romney, or Thompson. The biggest surpise of the night for me is that out of the Republican field I liked Huckabee the most. He seems the least like a follower of the Fox News platform and most sincere in his answers. McCain was my second favorite  overall  though I like the moderate  non-campaigning McCain a lot better than the campaigning McCain. I wish Rudy Giuliani would go away, fortunately I don’t think it’ll take too long. He seems to be a lot less important than early in the campaign season. Ron Paul was asking good questions and I’m glad he’s there for that. Hopefully he’ll get some other people to think about those things when making policy. Mitt Romney comes off to me as being too slick. Like he has the answer for everything already and nothing needs new thought.  Who cares about Fred Thompson? Well I guess he thought he was being clever by suggesting that Mitt Romney liked man dates.

Democrats:

I think Clinton was strong throughout and will probably get a boost from it. I think Obama held his own but who knows how it will affect his outcome. Edwards came across to me as wanting to be president but at the same time positioning himself to be a vice-presidential candidate. Richardson seemed to start out slowly but by the end he was able to list all his experience and explain how that will help his presidency. His list of experience is indeed impressive and he managed to help make Clinton’s point that having the experience will help create change.

I still have no idea how it’ll all turn out but the coming weeks should be interesting.

Do foot fetishists have to work at keeping their cool going through airport security?

From when I was brushing my teeth last night:

If we develop intelligent machines, are we going to ban and destroy all copies of movies and books about man/machine war? Seems like you wouldn’t want them to know you’re afraid of them.

Would that then extend to media with scenes of violence against machines like the destruction of the fax machine in Office Space?

Anyway, they still manage to have good things from time to time (not good enough to subscribe anymore) but an interview with Newt Gengrich they ran in the October 2006 issue is one of the highlights of the past year. I didn’t know that he was a strong supported of sciences and probably would have ended up in a science related field had he not gone the history/politics route. After his time in congress he went to universities for a few years to catch up on what he had missed in science while he was in congress.

I thought the most interesting point of the interview was his suggestion that we pay kids to take math and science classes. I’ve heard pay schemes for kids before but this one sounded better to me because the kids would only get the payout if they got a B or better. The idea being that instead of kids spending time after school in a minimum-wage job, they can earn the same minimum wage and put the time to studying. I can see a few problems with it, especially as fights begin as to what is worth paying for, but the idea has potential I think.

I think the most disturbing part of this election though was a statement I found by one of the candidates after wondering why so many candidates had no statement or just a one-liner… “Candidate statements, once free, now cost $20 per word. Fight pay-to-play government–Vote Green. My statement: http://www.votecafiero.com/statement“. $20 a word?! That means that assuming pay-to-play and the URL are counted as one word, that statement right there cost $340. That blows the one chance some of the lesser funded candidates might have to get some votes.

The slow was the candy giving at home. By 7 no one was there and then we left, leaving the bag of candy on the front step. Only about 5 pieces were taken while we were gone. I’m guessing that’s because parents told their kinds not to be greedy or they thought they were being watched.

The other day I decided to search to see if any information was out there for the TRS-80 Color Computer. My first computer was the TRS-80 Color Computer. You can see a picture here but the information isn’t quite correct since ours came with 32K RAM. The CoCo2 was just a smaller package and nicer keyboard. The CoCo3 offered a faster processor, more memory, and better graphics. How much better was it? People are still hacking away on it! In 2000 a game similar to Castle Wolfenstein 3D was made for it. Sure it was low resolution, but this is a 2MHz processor we’re talking about here and it does it! People have also built IDE controllers for it, SCSI controllers, someone is working on ethernet. It makes me want to pull out the computer, get this stuff, and start playing again!

Why does this add to my nerdiness? I still have mine all boxed up in the shed because I can’t bear to throw away my first computer and I went to two conventions centered around these computers when I was in high school.

I would have thought that humor was perceived as more intelligence, but a survey I read yesterday showed that the impression women had of the humorous men was that they were less intelligent. It seems that if you are doing more verbal humor which would attract the verbal humor loving female that more intelligence would be required, but I guess a sense that the male is a clown takes over and the humor is just appreciated for humor. Also, since some researchers now think that intelligence is completely determined by the woman I guess selecting for intelligence isn’t really necessary and whatever leads to humor can be the focus.

I woke up at 5:30AM (no alarm), hopped in the shower, got ready and then called Terry. Terry said he’d be ready so I went over there and picked him up and handed him the Fry’s ads so he could prepare. When we got to the store that had cops out directing traffic. We got out of the Disneyland parking line and parked a block away.

We got to the store and saw more people there than we had ever seen before. We got a cart in case we needed it for bigger stuff and headed to the LCD monitors because there were some sweet deals there. I decided I could hold off on one so I went to get a free 80GB hard drive while Terry looked at the LCDs. Then Terry called me so he could find me (in the networking aisle (I was there mostly because it was quiet)). Terry called his brother from there to ask his advice om LCD panels and I went to look for the SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Video Edition so I could finally record these laserdiscs to DVD (especially the original Star Wars) when I heard an employee yelling that the line started on aisle 13. I went back for Terry and put him in line and continued my search. I found what I wanted and headed back to Terry who was now on aisle 15.

Then we waited in line and got to snake through the video game section (XBox 360 was looking nice!) before I saw that some CDs were on sale. I excused myself and picked up the new Madonna album and the new Enya album for $6.77 each. Terry was still in the video game section when I returned. We finally passed out of the video game section to the computer section where the manager’s special was getting a free printer (a nice one even) if you bought a laptop or desktop computer. The funny part is that he was standing right next to the line and YELLING the deal to everyone who passed. If someone stopped and asked a question about it he would yell the answer even if they were face to face.

We finally made it past the computer section to the A/V section. We envied the huge wall-hanging LCD panels, and continued with the line. A few employees were walking around with hand-baskets full of batteries asking people if they needed batteries. We declined each time.

We finally made it through the appliance section and could see the checkout stands. Yay! And then a few more feet and we could see that the line actually turned left and went across the front of the store and back again before being able to check out. That was a problem since I had to be home by 9AM to take Nicole to work. I relayed this to Terry and he asked “So we have to abandon everything?” I said “Yeah, unless you want to wait here while I go take Nicole to work.” He said he had nothing to do that day so we went ahead with that. I stashed my pile of stuff so I could get it later and went home.

I got home in time, took Nicole to work, and got back to Fry’s to find Terry waiting outside. We went back in to find my stuff which was still where I stashed it, and I check for any deals on the NintendoDS. There was a bundle with two games I had zero interest in, but they also had the standard Nintendogs bundle, and Nicole wanted Nintendogs so that was a good deal. I picked up Trauma Center: Under the Knife because it sounded fun. The checkout line was normal sized at that point so we checked out right away.

What did I learn in case I want to do something similar again? Go with someone else (we did that), park a block away, and get in line as soon as you enter the store. Then you can take turns shopping and be ready to check out at the end.

Waco, Texas
Church tragedy: The pastor of a Texas church was electrocuted this week when he grabbed a microphone while standing in a baptismal pool. About 800 people watched helplessly as the Rev. Kyle Lake, 33, of University Baptist Church in Waco, began flailing after he stepped into the waist-deep water. The woman being baptized had not yet entered the water, and was not hurt. The church was more crowded than usual because it was homecoming weekend at nearby Baylor University. “He was grabbing the microphone so everyone could hear,” said one church goer. “It’s the only way you can be loud enough.”

• Oct 26 – Seattle – University Books – 7:30PM
• Oct 30 – Santa Cruz – Bookshop Santa Cruz – 7:30PM
• Nov 1 – Berkeley – Cody’s Bookstore – 7:30PM
• Nov 2 – San Francisco – Intersection 4 The Arts – 7PM & 9PM
• Nov 3 – San Francisco – A Clean, Well-Lighted Place For Books – 7PM

Sort of like finding things is over-hearing things. Thanks to others I have found the joy of overheardinnewyork.com and after having read through the entire back log I’ve learned some things. That New Yorkers seem to have an anal fixation, that they have really entertaining bums and crazies, and that half the city is on something much of the time. Also that there are a lot of lost people.

Oh yeah! I found something that I’m going to send in to Found Magazine…

I don’t think zombies are much for reading so I don’t think it did much good.

If you like Found, check it out.

Insect stings cause a lot of pain without causing a serious amount of damage relative to the whole organism. Enough pain so they the immediate response is to swat (kill the bug) or run away, and the long-term response is to fear another bite or sting. The bug is giving you a message which most of the time means leave to it alone.

The terrorists cause death and pain, yes, but the damage physically done to the body being attacked as a whole is minimal. Their message often times is to leave them alone – Al Qaeda wants us out of the middle east, and they hope that the fear they have caused is enough to deter future involvement.

This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t keep watching them to make sure they don’t get too capable of inflicting damage or from being able to stop them. It’s just another perspective for looking at them.

Today’s theme was cut off the bike lane to make a right turn.

It’s not because it’s a big corporation and the local coffee house should be supported instead though I do prefer the variety of the local places.

It’s this: When I go to Starbucks with someone I tend to not wait in line so as not to crowd things. So I pick a place to stand that doesn’t block or crowd the pickup area or invade the space of those seated at tables. Without fail people will start lining up behind me even if it’s clear the line is elsewhere. So I’ll move to a different out of the way location, and I must look like the designated line-leader the new people will start lining up behind me again!

Is there something in the coffee that inspires queueing? Is it just the design of the shops that makes peoplw want to line up behind anyone convenient?

Many people seem to feel that you either have to belive in evolution, or in creationism, or in intelligent design which is the newest form of creationism. However, there is room for these things to complement one another.

Let’s say life was created. From parents to children, one generation to the next, the children are combinations of traits of the parents. Like all changes, some are better than others, and in the long run and over many sets of children, the better things are going to be more well off than the things that aren’t as good. We have seen this with people immune to diseases and with bacteria becoming resistant to drugs. That is the basis for evolution, but in no way does that discount creation. You can say the system that we call evolution was created. We don’t know why, but we also don’t know why we were created in the first place. We just know we were created in God’s image. To us an image is a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional scene. It’s not perfect, and obviously is not going to have all the qualities of the original. We, being in three dimensions, perhaps are limited renditions of a higher dimensional nature of God.

Science neatly sidesteps the why because they have no idea. All science is saying with evolution is that this system is in place and has been identified and that can be used to build more knowledge about the world we live in. This all fits since we were also created as curious creatures who also happen to be excellent at manipulating symbols and information. We can’t help but try to figure stuff out.

30 Days has people live in a way foreign to them for 30 days to see how it is in the other side of the fence. Unfortunately Spulock has his own spin on it and rather than just letting the viewer see what is happening throughout you get interjections of various factoids that tell you the conclusion well before the end.

Episode 1 – Minimum Wage. Morgan Spurlock and his fiancee move to Ohio for a month to live on minimum wage. It was a shock to them but they were actually doing fairly well especially since they had to start by finding a place and some jobs. Their downfall? They go to the emergency room at the drop of a hat. You can tell that they are used to seeing a doctor for any little thing that goes wrong. First she goes for a bladder infection. She was in a lot of pain so I could see that. Then he strained his wrist and it swelled up some. Instead of doing what many people (certainly most who are without medical insurance) would do which is to ice it and/or put an ace bandage on it, he goes to work and strains it some more so it swells more. Still he could have done the ice and bandage thing, but instead he goes to the emergency room where they give him an ace bandage. The emergency room fee was $500 which was rediculous, but it’s obviously there to stop people from going there with minor problems like his. People without medical insurance learn to deal with minor problems at home so they don’t have to spend $900 for two emergency room visits per month.

Episode 2 – A man goes to an aging doctor to get injected with steroids and starts working out to hope to get back to his college shape. This guy was given 40+ supplement pills to take per day and then everyone wonders why he has liver problems. This one was good for showing how easy it is to get prescription drugs in Mexico. Everyone talks about it but you never see it, well as an interlude Morgan SPurlock walks into several pharmacies and just asks for them. They have them over with no questions asked. Unfortunately this episode comes off as being down on all supplements, even vitamins. Really you just shouldn’t have them in the quantities this guy was taking.

Episode 3 – A christian man goes to live in a muslim household. It is interesting to see how differently he is treated when he dresses and observes their customs. He gets stopped at the airport for the first time and people give him weird looks. Aside from him trying to decide if it’s ok for him to pray like the muslims or even go through the motions (much of the show), the interesting part is a discussion about whether muslims should condemn the actions of the muslim terrorists. That part doesn’t go on long and it’s a shame. Maybe there was but it was cut?

Episode 4 – A mid-west military man goes to live with a gay man in San Francisco. Aside from learning that the gays settled in the catsro district in San Francisco during WWII which the navy dropped them off there and said thanks, but no thanks, there is nothing that really stands out. He learns that gay men are ok.

Episode 5 – Two resource hogs go live in an eco-village off the grid. What I don’t like about this episode is that it says that we have all these alternate energy sources that we should just switch to and life would get better. Yes, the solar is great, but they don’t mention that the making of solar panels is extremely toxic and environmentally expensive. They say we should be using bio-diesel and vegetable oil, but there isn’t enough vegetable matter produced every year to come close to what we use in energy. Even adding up every alternative energy source can’t equal what the world uses now. The best thing to do right now while trying to find alternate energy sources is to use less. About all they said about that though was that using compact fluorescent bulbs is good (definitely). I appreciate that these communities exist though. They are trying to find other ways that we can live with less impact; they are little ecological research laboratories. I just didn’t really care for the portrayal in the show with no mention that they are relying on outside society still for their cars and their solar panels, and probably medical care if it is necessary.

Episode 6 is supposed to be a mother going on a 30 day drinking binge to show her college-aged daughter how bad it is. I think I’m done with 30 days though.

And while I’m writing about better I’ll also mention how when I was a kid there was always glass broken all around. All the beverages came in glass bottles and even if you weren’t the bottle smashing type enough still fell to make gladd on the sidewalk or road a comming and annoying thing. Now that plastic bottles are the norm I rarely see the glass. Yay!

In the past I’ve thought that the people today aren’t much different from the people in the past. One generation is always complaining about the upcoming one. But I think there are some differences and trends that do create differences between people today and those from earlier. And I think these things also made the previous generation the “people today” for the generation before them.

It’s all Hitler’s fault! Not really, but the differention that is at the heart of the complaints seems to have started at the end of World War II with the troops coming home. During that time there was a big push to the suburbs. Cheap suburban homes were built to accomodate all the troops coming home and instead of returning to crowded cities where you had to interact with people on a regular basis, everyone had a little space of their own. Aside from this new found personal space leading to the baby boom, it was also the first step towards personal privacy on a scale not seen before. People had their own retreat. People still talked to their neighbors and made friends with them because old habits die hard and people like to share their experiences.

Next came the automobile everyone had to have. The Model-T did its job and brought the cheap car to the masses, but it wasn’t something you would want to spend a lot of time in. The 50s became a time of explosive growth for cars. Cars suddently looked cool and with the prosperity after the war everyone could afford one. With the car mania can all the services that could support cars. Now restaurants had you eating in cars, you could watch movies in cars, and you could listen to the radio in cars. No need to eat with others, or interact with others in shared entertainment like gathering around the radio or sitting with others in a theater. You still had gatherings because televisions were expensive and the programming was only on for a few hours a day so everyone gathered to watch those shows.

Moving into the 60s radios got smaller and you could carry them with you easily. Stereos got cheaper so people could have their music in their own rooms. Cars continued their growth. All of these things work towards giving people the ability to isolate themselves to their own space even if their space is shared.

The 70s brought about more portable music sources in the form of cassette tapes and more portable playing devices, and headphones started to become common for more isolation from others.

The 80s saw computers start to gain acceptance in the home but there was nothing about them that the average person would want to use on a regular basis. Some people got sucked in but for the average person it wasn’t anything. Home video rentals and cable became big players and many people didn’t see a reason to go to a theater if they could just wait and watch it in their homes and away from the crowds. But small headphones showed up as well as compact discs. These weren’t any more portable than tapes, but they gave people the same quality they would get at home in any device that would play them. Less reason to be in your own space to be in your own “space.”

The 90s saw portable video games start up, portable digital music players which made music even more portable, and even small headphones. People can immerse themselves in their electronic entertainments without carrying too much. Home theaters became popular, giving people similar experiences at home as could be found in a movie theater. People found they could better isolate themselves in their home without the high prices, and hey, home popcorn is just as good for them.

The internet also burst on to the scene and had explosive growth. The internet allowed people to share their experiences with more people than ever before. People became glued to their computers with the new sharing freedom. At the same time it allowed them to share anonymously which means they didn’t have to care for the feelings of others or worry about any consequences for anything they said.

In the 00s digital music players could now carry hundreds of albums in the space of a pack of playing cards and could be listened to on tiny headphones. Complete immersion was possible. Video game devices were better and lasted longer on their batteries. The internet continues to be an outlet without much in the way of consequence.

So what is wrong with people today? People continue to want and continue to get devices andentertainments that allow them to be isolated from one another. When they are isolated they don’t learn or remember how best to communicate with others or interact in other ways. They become selfish since it’s all about them in their personal world of entertainment. In that personal world why do the others matter?