No more limbo

The Guardian reports that the Catholic church is nixing limbo. Limbo was a sort of antechamber, not heaven, not hell. The only problem is that "it" never "was". It was invented to allow theologians to state that Plato and others weren't in hell. No, they were in limbo. Theologians who came up with this afterlife filing system would have made good programmers or accountants, except that programmers and accountants are constrained by a more rigourous set of standards than were those who thought up limbo.

TV or not TV

Not TV. That is the answer. The kids go to bed at 8:30 or 8:45. I go to bed a bit after 11:00 (I sleep on the bus in the morning, I'm good at that). This leaves me with a bit more than 2 hours of time to get other things done in the evening such as do the dishes, tidy up, re-tile the washroom, etc. Also, I'm writing a web application to sell posters online. TV is a waste of my precious time. I'd rather be sitting at the kitchen table programming or playing Scrabble with Nancy than finding out who killed a woman with a hot glue gun or why what seemed to be an infection from an ingrown toenail has spiralled into what looks like rabies but really isn't but will probably end up being a micro tumour on the pituitary or adrenal gland.

Blue colour blindness

Blue color blindness. Blue color blindness, which is rare, is an inability to distinguish both blue and yellow. Blue and yellow are seen as white or grey. Although as many females as males have this deficiency, it usually appears in people who have physical disorders, such as liver disease or diabetes mellitus. However, it is not uncommon for young boys to have blue/green confusion that becomes less pronounced in adulthood.

also

Blue color blindness, also known as incomplete achromatopsia or blue-cone monochromatism, is an X-linked recessive disorder in which only the blue cones and the rods are functioning properly. A previously proposed theory states that signals from rods travel in the same pathways which carry signals from the blue-cones, making color vision in a blue-cone monochromat impossible. However, current research on blue-cone monochromats shows that signals from some rods and cones may be traveling by separate pathways to where wavelength discrimination takes place, making color vision possible in this type of monochromat, when both rods and blue cones are working simultaneously under twilight conditions.

Lewis often mixes up blues and greens.

Flu shot

Just got a flu shot. First time. Got two stickers that say "I'm Protected - The Flu. You can't afford it". That's a message for those listening to the business case for paying for someone to come to the workplace and do the injections, not for someone who just got a flu shot. What about "I just got a flu shot!". My kids will like the stickers, nonetheless.

Wikipedia libel controversy

There's a controversy at Wikipedia, an online collaboratively built and managed encyclopedia, over potentially libelous statements about John Seigenthaler Sr., a former administrative assistant to Robert Kennedy. The statement suggested that Mr. Seigenthaler had been suspected of involvement in Kennedy's assasination and had subsequently moved to the Soviet Union for ten years. None of this is true.

What I find more interesting is that this incident has sparked a debate on the article's discussion page on whether anonymous editing should be disallowed in favour of editing by members with verified email addresses. Probably not a bad idea and a necessary one as Wikipedia becomes more of an authority and comes under pressure to enact policies and procedures to increase accountabililty.

I love Wikipedia. Where else can one read carefully constructed articles on such diverse topics as Namibia, Spider Man, the Greek civil war, and Babylon 5? It's great not having someone else decide what's valuable information and what's not.

Lewis's favourite books

Lewis likes the books

• Poppleton in Winter, about a pig and his friends. Not sure why he likes it, but the stories are pleasant.
  
• The Adventures of a Nose, about a nose who wants to "fit in by sticking out". In each picture the nose is surrounded by objects that serve to frame it as a nose in a face. Lewis requests this one every night. I think he's fascinated by seeing an anthropomorphic nose and its framing within each picture.
  
• Yum Yum Dim Sum, about all the foods that one can get when having a dim sum dinner. The pictures are photos of carefully crafted paper art. Lewis loves the pictures.

Janneke

Janneke was working on a magick trick the other day, trying to make a bead disappear. It worked! She lost track of the bead and only found it later five feet away. The funny thing is that when the bead disappeared she figured that she had somehow performed magick and decided to look in her ear to see if it had been transported there.

Ruminations on terrorism by an Iraqi blogger

... I try to imagine what would happen to me, personally, should this occur. How long would it take for the need for revenge to settle in? How long would it take to be recruited by someone who looks for people who have nothing to lose? People who lost it all to one blow. What I think the world doesn’t understand is that people don’t become suicide bombers because- like the world is told- they get seventy or however many virgins in paradise. People become suicide bombers because it is a vengeful end to a life no longer worth living- a life probably violently stripped of its humanity by a local terrorist- or a foreign soldier.

I hate suicide bombers. I hate the way my heart beats chaotically every time I pass by a suspicious-looking car- and every car looks suspicious these days. I hate the way Sunni mosques and Shia mosques are being targeted right and left. I hate seeing the bodies pile up in hospitals, teeth clenched in pain, wailing men and women…

But I completely understand how people get there.

New PQ leader

Quebec's separatists are counting on a politician who admits to snorting cocaine to win independence, writes Anne McIlroy.

"Snorting cocaine to win independence". I see more than one interpretation of this phrase. Will PQ politicians also torture kittens to win independence? Who knows how low they'll stoop.

Weasel words

From MSNBC

“There is a great deal of misinformation feeding on itself about U.S. forces allegedly using ‘outlawed’ weapons in Fallujah,” the department said. “The facts are that U.S. forces are not using any illegal weapons in Fallujah or anywhere else in Iraq.”

Venable said white phosphorus shells are a standard weapon used by field artillery units and are not banned by any international weapons convention to which the U.S. is a signatory.

From the Christian Science Monitor

But they do raise the issue of the military's judgment. Because fires can burn out of control during a battle, the Convention on Conventional Weapons in 1980 banned the use of incendiary devices, like white phosphorous, in heavily populated areas. America, however, did not sign the agreement.

Ah. The US also decided not to sign on to this treaty's prohibition of the use of lasers. Nor has the US signed on to the land mine treaty. If the US wants the "freedom" to use phosphoros weapons in populated areas it should not complain when it's vilified for doing so.

The US is a very powerful and influential nation. I like the US and am married into an American family. I have deep emotional ties to the US. That's why, I suppose, I'm so bothered when the US passes up the opportunity to show leadership in the restraint area. They can do better than that and could help others see how to do so as well.

Lewis

Lewis put a bead up his nose Monday and became, understandably, rather distressed. Nancy called me and I told her how to make a rounded hook out of a paperclip. I saw the doctor do this last time Lewis stuck a bead up his nose. Several hours in the emergency room avoided. Lewis is now probably old enough to remember not to put more things up his nose.

White phosporous

The Globe reports on the US military's response to an Italian news article on the use of white phosphorous in its assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujeh.

"WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition," the authors wrote. "We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE [high explosive]" munitions.

One man's psychological weapon is another's weapon of terror. Is napalm sprayed at civilians a psychological weapon? Is the weapon "psychological" when used against "enemy combatants" and one "of terror" when used against civilians? Perhaps it's difficult to only burn the flesh off the bad guys when you're assaulting a city. Perhaps people might not like the United States after seeing their family members scream in agony as phosphorous burned them to the bone despite attempts to smother it or immersing it in water.

Military invasion is not a "surgical" tool for peacebuilding. It should be a last resort, carried out with a heavy heart. The world is not a chess board, but rather filled with actual real people. People cannot really create reality through the might and power of their wonderful empire.

Black Eyed Peas - Gone Going

Johnny wanna be a big star
Get on stage and play the guitar
Make a little money, buy a fancy car
Big old house and an alligator
Just to match with them alligator shoes
He's a rich man so he's no longer singing the blues
He's singing songs about material things
And platinum rings and watches that go bling
But, diamonds don't bling in the dark
He a star now, but he ain't singing from the heart
Sooner or later he's just gonna fall apart
Coz his fans can't relate to his new found art
He ain't doing what he did from the start
And that's putting in some feeling and thought
He decided to live his life shallow
Passion is love for material

[Chorus]
And its gone... gone... going...
Gone... everything gone... give a damn...
Gone be the birds when they don't want to sing...
Gone people... up awkward with their things... gone.

You see yourself in the mirror
And you feel safe coz it looks familiar
But you afraid to open up your soul
Coz you don't really know, don't really know
Who is, the person that's deep within
Coz you are content with just being the na¯ve brown man
And you fail to see that its trivial
Insignificant, you addicted to material
I've seen your kind before
You're the type that thinks souls is sold in a store
Packaged up with inscent sticks
With them vegetarian meals
To you that's righteous
You're fiction like books
You need to go out to life and look
Coz... what happens when they take your material
You already sold your soul and its...

[Chorus]

You say that time is money and money is time
So you got mind in your money and your money on your mind
But what about... that crime that you did to get paid
And what about... that bid, you can't take it to your brain
Why you on about those shoes you'll wear today
They'll do no good on the bridges you burnt along the way

All that money that you got gonna be gone
That gear that you rock gonna be gone
The house up on the hill gonna be gone
The gold -- on your grill gonna be gone
The ice on your wrist gonna be gone
That nice little Miss gonna be gone
That whip that you roll gonna be gone
And what's worst is your soul will be gone

[Chorus]

Money spent in Iraq by the US

Antiwar.com has an article on the costs related to the invasion and occupation of Iraq and what could have been done with that money instead

If the $204 billion appropriated for the war so far had been used instead for social programs, according to the report, it could have paid for the health care of the more than 46 million citizens without medical insurance, the hiring of 3.5 million elementary school teachers, or the construction of affordable housing units for nearly two million people.

The same amount of money would also be enough to effectively cut world hunger in half and still cover the costs of life-preserving anti-AIDS medication, childhood immunization, and the clean-water and sanitation needs of the world's developing nations for almost three years.

Celebrity cook

Last night I watched with amusement and surprise as a news piece on the new White House head chef and the fact that this one's the first woman to hold the position. Why, I wondered, was this making the news? Ah, it makes sense if one considers that Bush is getting a lot of bad press over a woman camped near his Texas retreat, demanding to speak to him and have him tell her why the US is in Iraq and why her son died a pointless death. Bush apparantly met with her before, but didn't know her name or the name of her dead son and kept trying to act as if he was at a party.

The White House probably sent out a nice media package to be "consumed" by all relating to the new chef at the White House. A tasty diversion from Bush's otherwise unpalatable life at the moment. At least he's alive.

Fisking the War on Terror

Juan Cole gives a summary of the rise of radicals and the War on Terror from Reagan to the present. This summary would not meet with agreement from George Bush, I think.

Letter to John Reid, Information Commissioner of Canada

To: John Reid, Information Commissioner of Canada
From: Ian Marsman

I direct your attention to the website of National Resources Canada (http://geonames.nrcan.gc.ca/index_e.php), in particular, to the section of the site dealing with downloads of place name data (http://geonames.nrcan.gc.ca/prod/data_e.php). The data in question deals with populated areas and geological features and includes for each place information including latitude and longitude, province, type of location, etc. In order for a Canadian citizen or anyone else for that matter to gain access to the whole dataset a fee must be paid and a licensing agreement (http://geonames.nrcan.gc.ca/prod/endusr_e.txt) must be agreed to. The fee to be paid ranges from $70 for information about obsolete place names to $660 for the complete dataset. The licensing agreement (called a "sales agreement" on the link to the agreement file) reads like a software end user licensing agreement and includes restrictions on usage, referring to additional licensing that must be obtained if the data is to be accessed from a centralized server. I have a few questions.

• Is it legal to charge a Canadian citizen whose collection has already been paid for by Canadian taxpayers (I am both a Canadian citizen and taxpayer)?
• Is it legal to place restrictions on the legal usage of the data, restrictions that seem to be designed to extract additional revenue?

I would like to point out that the United States government makes available at no cost downloads of data for US place names ( http://geonames.usgs.gov/stategaz/index.html) and for place names for other countries, including Canada (http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/cntry_files.html). I have not found any mention of any sort of limitations on legal usage for this data. Why in the world should National Resources Canada charge me for data on place names in my own country while the US govenment provides similar (probably not as comprehensive) data without charge?

I am interested in using data on place names in Canada, the US, and possibly Mexico for a web-based business I am in the process of starting. I will be selling identification cards, posters, games, and other things relating to insects one can find in North America. My target audience is educators and amateur naturalists. In addition to the products I will be charging for I will be providing a service whereby people can submit places where one can find diffferent insects. This information will be available for free. Additional free services may include submission of insect sightings and display of sightings in the context of maps using Googles map service (http://maps.google.com) and their freely available map API (http://www.google.com/apis/maps/). The idea is to be able to make a living and also to get people more interested in insects and in issues such as biodiversity and the effects of human enterprise on the natural world. If I am unable to obtain Canadian place name data for free or for the cost of to Natural Resources Canada of downloading I will use the data freely available from the US government. I will then be in the ironic position of providing much better service to Americans than to Canadians, since the US data will be much more comprehensive.

Why is Natural Resources Canada getting in the way of educational and legitimate business usages of Canadian Place name data by Canadians, data whose collection has already been paid for by the Canadian citizen and taxpayer? I could understand a small charge to offset the cost of data storage and transmission bandwidth, but the fees charged and restrictions on usage made don't match this sort of cost-recovery strategy. I'd finally like to note that I wrote a few years ago asking why Natural Resources Canada charges for this data and received a reply that in effect said that this was their policy. This correspondence occurred in the context of my interest in using the data for a course I was teaching at Malaspina University College in Nanaimo, British Columbia. I ended up using the American data. I would appreciate your timely investigation of this matter and reply as to your planned actions. Thank-you very much for your time and attention to this matter.

Total educational awareness

Just follow this simple flow chart and no child will be left behind!

Found from Doc Searls

To Bush and his crew, education is all about measurement. What's sickening is that just about every educational "reform" involves more of this crap. Kids' natural curiousity, their ability to learn in their own ways, their unique non-curricular aspirations, their inherent genius, the fact that all of them develop at different rates and in different ways, are all flattened like pavement. "No child left behind" is the box nobody (least of all kids) are allowed to think outside of.

Reminds me of the flow charts made by people in US government beaurocracy for the "Total Information Awareness" program. Like TIA, what this chart probably represents is a way to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on beaurocratic machinations without actually addressing the underlying problems. I see a love and worship of computers and databases and Visio here, but not of the human beings who are teachers and students and parents. This program, if it ever staggers to its feet, will probably be ISO certified.

Incidentally, the No Child Left Behind program stipulates by law that schools must provide contact information for their students to be used by military recruiters. From what I've read, these recuiters seem to have been trained in agressive sales and cult recruitment techniques. This data gathering tactic fits in with the total information awareness philosophy and seems a perversion of what is implied by the name of the program.

Schneier link

Bruce Schneier has a nice pointer to a news snippet whereby soldiers boarding a commercial flight were required to surrender pocket knives, nose-hair clippers, and lighters, despite being decked out in full combat weaponry (rifle, handgun, etc.). Another example of failing to build human discernment into a system designed by lovers of rules and data. I like the quote Scheier gives at the end as well:

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wikipedia entry on the Byzantine Empire

Wikipedia has an excellent entry on the Byzantine Empire. In scope it covers the time from the unified Roman Empire through the split up to the dissolution of the empire during the time of the Crusades. I very much enjoy the coverage of the strategies employed by various leaders to hold and expand the empire, including the interesting thema system used to expand, settle, and militarily hold onto territory. Also of great interest is coverage of the interplay between religion and politics in the eastern and western portions of the Roman empire and in the crusades and ultimate end of the empire.