True comfort

CBC's Dispatches, a wonderful program giving in-depth essays on current news topics, an almost dead art, has a podcast (they used to have a lame Realaudio download). Their podcast is here. This week's podcast is on Korea's Grandmothers who were sex slaves to Japanese troops during WWII. There is very touching coverage of a young Japanese man and his devotion to these women. He learned about their story while studying with Koreans in Tokyo. Following up on this new knowledge, he went to Korea and began talking to them, breaking down their distrust by learning their local dialect of Korean and in general being a good listener. He now lives with them and is a guide at their residence, greeting visitors to the residence, including uninformed Japanese young people. This is a real tear jerker of a story.

Fun debate on the use of "they"

There's a fun archived debate in a discussion on Groklaw (the actual discussion has to do with a comparison of the formatting approaches of OpenOffice's vs. MS's document standards (the OpenOffice one was approved today, yay!). The discussion, though, dealt with the use of the word "they" as a gender neutral pronoun

Unless it is appropriate, can people please avoid using gender specific
pronouns. It doesn't matter in this article whether, or not, the developer is
female - but it keeps referring to "her", it would be better to use
"their" instead. Constant reference to "her" imply that
most developers are female.

Traditionaaly "he" has been used to indicate either gender, and it is
the greatest common string of characters in "He" and She". Also,
"she" has traditionally be associated with females only. But, I would
recommend using "their" and "they" rather than
"hers/his" and "he/she".

Also using gender neutral language avoids offending people who identify
themselves with both genders (they are rare, but I spoken with several). Note
that using "themselves" is a lot more elegant and shorter than saying
"herself or himself".

Constant inappropriate use of gender distracts from the otherwise excellent
technical article.

As the author mentioned, the article used "she" when referring to an individual programmer who might be working with the two XML formatting approaches. The replies ranged from "get over it" to nostalgic remeniscences of manuals using "she" to discussions on the latinizing movement of the 19th century to the lack of gendered pronouns in Finnish to the centuries old usage of they as a neuter singular in English. This is the sort of nit-picky, sleeves rolled up discussion that makes it fun to be a techie! Lateral thinkers of the world disperse!

I had a funny experience with the neuter use of "he" at my MA graduation ceremony. The honourary speaker at the graduation was a former Ontario Supreme Court judge and a woman. She started off her speech by saying that she would be referring to the singular person as "he", using the "neutral" usage. Fiona, my femenist co-graduand who was sitting beside me, could barely repress the urge to grind her teeth in anger. The judge was probably just acting out a well-worn habit of qualifying everything she said.

Wikipedia has a nice overview of the usage of "they" as a singular pronoun, including a section on historical usage, inluding by Shakespeare. That settles it then.

Incidentally, the Microsoft XML programming style makes me think it was designed by a bunch of people who love programming in C. It's very pointer-oriented. Normalized as well. Not readable.

Neil Young's new album "Living with War"

From Flags of Freedom

Have you seen the flags of freedom?
What color are they now?
Do you think that you believe in yours
More than they do theirs somehow?
When you see the flags of freedom flyin’

From After the Garden

we live in the garden of eden, yeah
don't know why we wanna tear the whole thing to the ground
we live in the garden of eden, yeah
don't know why we wanna tear the whole thing down

From Living with War

In the crowded streets
In the big hotels
In the mosques and the doors of the old museum
I take a holy vow
To never kill again
Try to remember peace

The rocket's red glare
Bombs bursting in air
Give proof through the night,
That Our flag is still there

From The Restless Consumer

The restless consumer flies
Around the world each day
With such an appetite for taste and grace

People from around the world
Need someone to listen
We're starving and dying from our disease
We need your medicine
How do you pay for war
And leave us dyin' ?
When you could do so much more
You're not even tryin'

I'm a bit too young to be tripped out by the library of hippie protest song. This stuff does resonate with me though. Neil, perhaps because though he's proud of the US, grew up in Canada, has a refreshingly broader view than much national protest music that either seems to blame everything on the US or can't see past the toenails of lady liberty.

What I enjoy as well about the album is that its lyrics aren't a collection of bludgeons but rather heartfelt and measured. Neil's into his sixties now. I'm well into my thirties and just beginning to see the possibility of moderation and realize rather than look for evil people under every rock it is often useful to look for the pull of greed or fear or anger. I think Neil sees all of these and more and is protesting for a return to actions led by feelings of truth and justice and love, attributes that led him to fall in love with his adopted country.

Neil Young - The Restless Consumer

Found on a site with lots of ads and popups.

The people have heard the news
The people have spoken
You may not like what they said
But they weren't jokin'

Way out on the desert sands
Lies a desperate lover
They call her the "Queen of Oil"
So much to discover

Don't need no ad machine
Telling me what I need
Don't need no Madison Avenue War
Don't need no more boxes I can see

Covered in flags but I can't see them on TV

Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies

The restless consumer flies
Around the world each day
With such an appetite for taste and grace

People from around the world
Need someone to listen
We're starving and dying from our disease
We need your medicine
How do you pay for war
And leave us dyin' ?
When you could do so much more
You're not even tryin'

Don't need no TV ad
Tellin' me how sick I am
Don't want to know how many people are like me
Don't need no dizziness
Don't need no nausea
Don't need no side effects like diarrhea or sexual death

Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies

The restless consumer lies
Asleep in her hotel
With such an appetite
For anything that sells

A hundred voices from a hundred lands
Need someone to listen
People are dying here and there
They don't see the world the way you do
There's no mission accomplished here
Just death to thousands

A hundred voices from a hundred lands
Cry out in unison

Don't need no terror squad
Don't want no damned Jihad
Blowin' themselves away in my hood
But we don't talk to them
So we don't learn from them
Hate don't negotiate with Good

Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies

The restless comsumer flies
Around the world each day
With such an appetite for efficiency
And pace...

Don't need no more lies.

Neil Young's new album "Living With War"

I'm not so likely nowadays to jump into things political, but I am interested in Neil Young's upcoming album "Living With War". An interview can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7utryGZ25dg

A rather articulate man. Kind of sad that rather than ask him about what he was trying to do and say with the album she (the interviewer) kept on trying to pick at ways he was being disloyal or perhaps might not have a right to speak because he's also Canadian even though he's been living in the US for 40 of his 60 years. The strategy seems to be to prevent disloyal speech when possible by questioning the credibility or motives of the speaker. Speech is supposed to be one of those inalienable, self-evident rights. Whether people will listen is another thing. I appreciate that Neil Young emphasized this in the interview that the protection of freedom and the right to speak and disagree is a responsibility shared by all people in all countries. At least the host's last comment was frank. The interviewer didn't know what to do with ".. I think that anyone who feels that the themes of this album are motivated by publicity, I think that's ridiculous".

The album can be listened to on the web starting Friday the 28th at http://neilyoung.com/

Two out of three ain't good

Sitting atop seven active earthquake faults, the Bay Area has a one-in-25 chance of experiencing another large earthquake in the next 25 years, the U.S. Geological Survey predicts.

In early 2001, a report from the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) concluded that an earthquake in the area was one of the three "likeliest, most catastrophic disasters" facing the United States.

The other two were a terrorist attack on New York City and a hurricane striking southern Louisiana.

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.