Opera

I've never been to the opera. I like listening to it. Now that I live in Southern California again, close to opera buff Janis, we...are...going...to...The Opera™. (Having a Kirk-pause moment it seems. *clears throat* There, it's passed.)

Anywhoo, at some point later this year, actually February of the next, we will see Fidelio (Beethoven), Otello (Verdi), and Therese Raquin (Tobias Picker), at the San Diego Opera. Cool, huh?

Not all at once. Sheesh, don't look so worried.

Why, we'll be just like yogurt! Cultured and everything!

Thanks

T&M: Thanks for the birthday present!

Clinton, Britain, and Iraq

From the Scotsman, Oct 3 2002:

Bill Clinton gave his full and unequivocal backing to Tony Blair on Iraq yesterday, declaring that the Prime Minister was the only man who could unite the world against Saddam Hussein....

Mr Clinton appeared to give his reluctant backing to military action as a last resort, but stressed the UN had to be given the chance to secure the return of its weapons inspectors to Iraq first....

He also said he wanted to see "regime change" in Baghdad, but that this should come about in "non-military ways"....

Mr Clinton argued the first priority should be to defeat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, something he claimed should have been completed before the focus was turned on Iraq....

Mr Clinton admitted the US did not do enough to support international organisations. In a blunt warning to Mr Bush, he said: "You can't have an integrated world and have your say all the time. America can't dominate and run the world in that direction."

Gosh. That just sounds so...so...so darn sensible. You go, Bill.

Zope is Zope

Today I installed Squishdot on a 2.5x implementation of Zope. This product took more time to download [and downloading took approximately .0001 seconds] than it did to get it up and running. [Bear in mind that Zope was a previous install and I knew it already worked.] Squishdot's a slashdot-similar weblog tool, hence the name.

I'm genuinely impressed. By contrast, I was looking at the install of WebGUI we have to toy with, here [I have lots to toy with, here], and being vaguely dissatisfied with the User Content Submission System, so I modified that code to produce something more weblog-gy about 2 weeks ago. I keep detailed docs on what I do, and a work-blog is a reasonable format, thus this had immediate use for me. It's all in case I get hit by a bus tomorrow. No need to summon me in a seance just to ask what the status of my last projects were.

Either interface and back-end is fine for someone like Sidra At Work(tm) -- a simple work log, no threading, no discussions, basically no bells, whistles, or ding-a-lings (patent pending), so it's not like the up-and-running time makes a big difference. It's my job.

But the ease of gearing up Squishdot is certainly a plus when we're looking at interfaces [the average poster and a blog/project's manager] for use outside the MIS department.

Happy Birthday, Good Twin!

From the Evil(tm) one.

[Being a twin means learning the "you cut, I choose" strategy for sharing very early on in life. Not a bad thing, IMO.]

Harry Potter Letter Campaign

I've just been informed of a letter-writing campaign to promote the casting of Jason Carter (imdb() ref) as Sirius Black in the upcoming third Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. For those non-HP-book-readers, one thing of relevance to you is that SB does appear in later books as well.

For more information, visit the campaign itself.

Why is This a Big Deal?


From Reuters

A divided Senate will begin a fifth week of debate on Monday on legislation to create the department, as Democratic and Republican negotiators try to strike a compromise on a dispute over labor protections for the 170,000 workers that would fall under the massive proposed agency.

"I'm for workers rights ... but in the name of national security this administration, future administrations, need flexibility to put people in the right place at the right time in order to protect America from an enemy which still wants to hurt us," Bush told political donors in Denver.

Okay. What is the big deal? I mean, what is so special about the Department of Homeland Security [I mean, aside from the facist name, initial legislation creating it passing at warp speed with little to no oversight, and general Bad Idea-ness(tm), IMO] that the anticipated 170,000 workers to be employed there should be denied certain labor protections already enjoyed by other government employees?

The implication in Bush's remarks is that the Homeland Security Dept is the only government agency with a chance of "protecting America".

What is this, the Army? Because if it is, let's be up front about it.

More News Bang for Your Buck

I am in love with Google's new Google:News service. This is fabulous. Go on, show me headlines from around the world, culled automatically from 4,000 different sources. I dare ya.

Gimme, gimme, gimme.

It's still in beta, but this is definitely a winner.

Ecstatic Parkinsonism


The recreational drug Ecstasy may trigger Parkinson's.

Ew. Ew. Ew. Double-ew.

Solar-Powered Surgery

Oh, now this is just darn cool.



SOLAR SURGERY. Even some large hospitals find laser surgery too expensive. So physicists at the Blaustein Institute for Desert Research in Israel resort to nature. They collect and focus sunlight, and then transport it in an optical fiber to a surgery theater where it can be brought to bear on tissue (figures at http://www.aip.org/mgr/png/2002/163.htm). In general, the advantage of using laser light for surgery is not its coherence but high power density at adequate power levels. In this regard the solar unit can match typical surgical lasers in terms of power (8 watts) and power density (10 watts/mm^2). Jeffrey Gordon (jeff@menix.bgu.ac.il, 972-8-659-6923) and his colleagues report that tests on chicken breasts and chicken livers have been successful and that the next step will be to perform surgery on live mice with the solar optical fiber system. The goal for the project is to deliver cheap sunlight for killing human cancers with minimally invasive procedures. (Gordon et al., Applied Physics Letters, 30September 2002; homepage, www.bgu.ac.il/BIDR/research/staff/gordon.html)

PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News Number 606 September 25, 2002 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein, and James Riordon

Read A Book!




Hot damn, it's banned books week! How could I have forgotten! Time to read a banned book. Of course, it's always a good time to read a banned book.

How about some Harry Potter? Or Flowers for Algernon? Or James and the Giant Peach? Or The Adventures of Tom Sawyer? The Handmaid's Tale, perhaps?

Get to the library, there's books to read. This week, every week.

Being Human

You see it on TV all the time, in films, on the news, everywhere. When disaster strikes, we all pull together as a community. Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes. Famine relief. Whenever there's an event no one could have anticipated.

We have to help. We're a helping species. We build communities, and those communities are vital to us -- to our survival as individuals, to our survival as a species. It's part of what makes us human, this desperate need to help.

We pull together as human beings, as members of the same species, and cultural, gender, even religious differences cease to matter. Because the disaster is so large in scope, that nothing else makes a difference in the face of it, except for us standing together, helping one another, for the simple fact that we are human beings, and here is a fellow human in need.

Homeless because of an earthquake. Lost because of a tornado. Wounded by extremists who have walked away from what it means to be human, who are so outside our understanding of the world, they and their actions are literally inconceivable.

It drives us crazy when we can't help, or when we don't know what to do. And those are the times we must be most careful. Do I swear eternal vengeance on terrorists? Do I give 3 billion US in aid to the Red Cross (ok, that seems like a no-brainer)? Do I invade another country? What to do, what to do...

What to do, is, think compassionately, remembering that you are a human being, think heal, not hurt. Think, before all else, do no harm. Think with care.

What to do, today, right now? Pull off the road when you see a stranded motorist, see if you can help. Buy jumper cables and keep them under your passenger seat. Give a bum your french fries and bottled water, he needs them more than you do. Smile. Make a stranger laugh. Donate blood every 2 months.

It's not hard to be helpful, and it's easier every time you do it.

Lunar Objectives/Objections

Dennis Laurie, CEO of San Diego-based TransOrbital and Dr. Jim Arnold, Professor emeritus of Chemistry at USCD and a Co-Founder of the California Space Institute were guests on KPBS's These Days this morning [09.19.2002]

I only caught the latter half of the program, which means I missed all the juicy fact-filled setup at the top of the hour, and had to settle for the idiotic questions of a call-in talk show instead. I hate call-in talk shows. (No one ever calls in and asks questions. There were two questions the half-hour I listened. There were more than two callers.) I only forced myself to listen because I'm obsessed with the idea of commercial space exploration.

One final query from host Tom Fudge resulted in Laurie discussing TransOrbitals "seconday objectives", business objectives that are actually going to make them money in the long-term. His response was the most practical thing I've ever heard. Data storage, backups and archiving.

The lunar environment as physical host for failover and backup servers is an excellent idea. There are only two threats to something mechanical on the moon: temperature, and impact damage. The moon is dead: there's no earthquake-inducing tectonic movement, volcanoes, mudslides, lightning strikes, tornadoes -- any of those irritating little things that make seamless data management so touch-and-go for extremely large organizations, like, say, telecommunications providers.

Practical, practical, practical. I love it.

Don't Tell Me What You Know, Tell Me What You Know I Want To Hear

Caught this at Medley yesterday, of course:


HHS Seeks Science Advice to Match Bush Views

The Bush administration has begun a broad restructuring of the scientific advisory committees that guide federal policy in areas such as patients' rights and public health, eliminating some committees that were coming to conclusions at odds with the president's views and in other cases replacing members with handpicked choices.

One of the things an HHS spokesman remarked on in the article linked above is that this degree of change is not necessarily out of the ordinary, saying they, "don't think there is anything going on here that has not gone on with each and every administration since George Washington."

You know what? I don't care if every leader throughout history does it, has done and wants to keep on doing it. That's bad science, for one, and bad management for another. You're responsible for a nation? You surround yourself with the best people you can find. And then pray they give you a piece of their mind. It's what they're for.

"Hey, boss, this dam idea is a no-go."
"But I like the dam."
"Well, I know you like it, boss, but look at these numbers."
"I don't want numbers, I want my dam."
"Boss, the only way for the numbers to work is if the specific gravity of water changes."
"Can't we change it?"
"No, and we'd all die if we did, so that's a good thing."
(thinking about re-election) "Well, okay, no dam, I guess."
"Sure, Boss. Now, about this highway infrastructure..."

Resounding Silence

I have nothing to say. Oddly enough. Wait! Wait! I've got something...did you notice that in the mid-to-late '90's there was a plethora of adaptations of classic plays or novels targeting the youth market? (Well, maybe not plethora...)

Cruel Intentions, Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You. None of the marketing I saw played up the facts that these were ultra-hip versions of Les Liaisons dangereuses, Emma, and The Taming of the Shrew. Not that the period adaptations got short shrift in the past decade, I'm happy to report.

Of course, critics noticed.

I just think it's neat, though I have the occasional mind-boggle over the difference in experience between watching these as 'simply' films versus as adaptations of a story I already know.

I have to ask this question: is it assumed that the younger generation, which I am, gladly/sadly, no longer a part of, won't be interested in quote, period films, endquote? Or was it just a fad? Is it the costumes? The scary History(tm)?

Show *me* an ad with someone in pre-revolutionary France costume and I'm going to say to myself Ooooo! sex, subtly worked revenge, dire plots, honor, duty, duels, manipulation, and great hats. I am so there. But what about "these kids today", huh? Is the assumption that they won't have that burst of recognition, and thus won't want to see something like Dangerous Liaisons or Valmont, unless it gets remade in their image? (Not that I'm panning Cruel Intentions, I loved it, although I could've cut the very very very end.)

Hell, either way, who's up for Wuthering Heights, 2002?