Tuesday, November 30, 2004

BART to San Jose

Just got back from five days in Texas, sans Internet.

Our flight home was delayed an hour, but we couldn't call the person who was picking us up, because we left Houston at 5:30am Pacific, so she ended up coming to the airport twice. Ick.

As we were waiting for our baggage, I was thinking, if it weren't such a pain to take public transportation (Caltrain + BART) to the airport, I might actually do it. I've never understood why BART wasn't extended to the Peninsula a long time ago. Even now, the only expansion under construction is to San Jose.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

women in Asia

Numbers and facts extracted from various news articles and websites:

- In China, the gender imbalance for newborns is currently at about 117 to 100, and as high as 130 to 100 in Guangdong and Hainan. That means, in 20 years, when these babies become adults, there will be 117 men for every 100 women. Japan Times

- Japan's estimated 2004 fertility rate is 1.38 children per woman. CIA Factbook

- Around 40 percent of South Korean women are single at 30, compared to 14 percent twenty years ago. SFGate.com

- In Taiwan, the divorce rate is estimated at 25-30%, which is twice as much as it was 10 years ago. Interestingly, divorce laws in Taiwan were changed in 1985; previously, men had exclusive rights to their wives' property and personal belongings. MercuryNews.com

Monday, November 22, 2004

watch out, trick-or-treaters

I guess they weren't kidding about inspecting your Halloween candy for drugs.

My favorite:

LARGE ELECTRONIC CAPACITORS CONTAINING HEROIN IN PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

Can't even trust the geeks.

Sunday, November 21, 2004

Taipei's cloaking device

No, not that kind of cloaking device.

A company in Taipei is planning to build a city-wide wireless network, covering about 100 square miles, and costing US$70 million.

A few US cities have announced similar plans, but I'm thinking this one has a better chance of becoming a reality. First of all, the cost projection is much more reasonable than Philly's estimated US$10 million (plus an ongoing yearly cost). Secondly, the project seems to have broad support from city officials, due to the proposed 1-3% revenue tax. Finally, Taiwan seems to be on a roll with major projects:

Taipei's subway system (of 4 underground lines and a light rail line) was designed, approved, and constructed in record time. There are several expansions under construction through 2006. Kaohsiung, not to be outdone, is opening its own subway system (of 2 lines and 2 more in the future) in 2005.

Taipei 101, completed this year, is currently the world's tallest building, at 509 meters. It has built on the success of the adjacent Warner Village shopping center, also a recent development, and helped revitalize eastern Taipei.

A new high speed railway, based on Japan's Shinkansen, is scheduled for completion in 2005, and will transport passengers from Taipei to Kaohsiung in 90 minutes. Currently it's a four to six hour ride, or a one hour flight.

On the other side of the world, San Francisco has finished tearing down the Central Freeway, and has no plans to build another highway through (or under, or around) the city. I've taken to encouraging my parents to move from Marin to the Peninsula, so I can avoid slogging through two hours of tourist-infested traffic to go visit them.

Saturday, November 20, 2004

fight club

A friend of mine is moving to Seattle, so last night a bunch of us took him out for dinner, and then we all went to B Street Billiards to shoot some pool.

I was standing around, waiting my turn, watching the Kings game, when ESPN interrupted the game to show footage of a huge fight at the Pistons-Pacers game. Apparently, Ron Artest fouled Ben Wallace pretty hard right near the end of the game, and Wallace responded with a hard shove. When it was all over, both benches had cleared, O'Neal, Artest, and Steven Jackson had landed punches on Detroit fans, another fan had thrown a chair, the refs had called the game, and the Pacers had exited the stadium under a barrage of beer, popcorn, and other concession goodies.

ESPN figured out what sports fans really cared about, as usual, and started running the tagline, "What will the suspensions be?" Here's my guess as to what will happen:

- Artest and Jackson will be suspended for the season. They both went running into the stands to attack fans, which is comparable to Latrell Sprewell choking his coach, for which he got 68 games.
- O'Neal will be suspended for somewhere between 20-40 games. He did punch a fan, but the fan was on the court.
- (Ben) Wallace will be suspended for 4-8 games. He shoved Artest, which is a 2-4 game penalty, but then he threw a folder at him, which doubles it.
- Richard Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace will be suspended for 2-3 games. They were both involved in some pushing and shoving on the court.
- The rest of the Pistons will be suspended for one game. The NBA is pretty strict on the rule that if you leave the bench, you're suspended.
- The rest of the Pacers might also be suspended for one game, since they also came off the bench, but it's possible some of them could argue that they were getting out of the way for their own safety.

I guess the next question is what lawsuits will be filed. Artest and Jackson will likely be sued, and maybe O'Neal also. Looks like the Pistons just took out their biggest division rival in one night.

Thursday, November 18, 2004

two steps forward, one step back

Republicans in Congress are seeking to suspend the sale of RU-486 for six months while they review its approval.

I believe their logic is that since one person died after using RU-486, it must be dangerous. Let's not forget that when one event follows another, that indicates causality. Of course, no one has ever died from a miscarriage.

Monday, November 15, 2004

saying sorry

I ran across these sites the other day:

sorryeverybody.com and apologiesaccepted.com

I think it's a little self-righteous to apologize on behalf of other people, but it was interesting to look through the photos.

Friday, November 12, 2004

sunrise, sunset

Yesterday afternoon, I was trying to figure out what time the sun would set, so we could shoot some hoops before it got dark. Thanks to Google, I found this site from the US Naval Observatory, which can be used to generate a full year's worth of daily sunrise and sunset times for any US city. Yummy.

Thursday, November 11, 2004

images from Iraq

Maybe this guy will be the Matthew Brady of the Iraq war. (Flash required)

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

death of a hard drive

The other day, my work computer started making strange (and annoying) clicking noises, so I filed a ticket, and the Helpdesk people diagnosed the problem as the hard drive going bad.

That afternoon, they came by with a new hard drive, swapped it in, and I was up and running in about ten minutes. All of my data except the binaries I'd compiled were in my home directory (stored remotely on the network) so I just ran a couple of compilations and I was back in business.

I did lose my local installations of Firefox and Thunderbird, but luckily Ops had added both to our standard Linux desktop configuration at some point, so in effect I just got a version upgrade.

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Yay Firefox!

Mozilla announced the release of Firefox 1.0 today!

I've been using Firefox since 0.7 and it kicks Internet Explorer's ass. It's way better than the regular Mozilla browser too, from a stability standpoint.

Trust me, once you've tried Tabbed Browsing and Find As You Type, you'll be hooked.

Monday, November 08, 2004

WB night

I spent most of tonight catching up on episodes of Gilmore Girls, Everwood, and Jack & Bobby. It's really too bad that WB is messing with their schedule: I can't stop watching even the Sorkin-less West Wing, so I'm going to have to give up on Jack & Bobby, though I really liked the episodes with the religious Arab student and the sexual harassment case.

Anyway, I finally saw the episode where Rory gets kidnapped by Logan and the "Life and Death Brigade". I'm not going to get into the whole big discussion about secret societies and I'm not going to comment (very much) on the surprising amounts of time and money those poor hardworking Yale college students have on their hands.

I am going to say that Logan's character is really starting to grow on me. He's not as boring as Dean, he's not as annoying as Tristan, and he's not as angsty as Jess. He's not good looking, but he's definitely charming. And, in the words of one TWoP poster, "Holy crap, if Logan picked out that gorgeous dress (for Rory) then he's definitely a keeper...or gay."

Sunday, November 07, 2004

The Incredibles

I went to see The Incredibles last Friday, and in my opinion, it did live up to the hype. The story was simple but nuanced, and the visuals were stunning, as we've come to expect from Pixar. The characterization was fairly good: I did cringe a bit at Elastigirl turning into a stereotypical soccer-mom type, but I liked the wardrobe artist Edna (I hear she was voiced by the director) and the subplots for the children, Dash and Violet. Plus, the movie was genuinely funny; not in a slapstick way but in an intelligent way.

This afternoon I was reading a Slashdot review of the movie, and I ran across an interesting comment about the "weird streak of Ayn Randism" running through the plot:

There were a couple of lines thrown in like "And when everybody's super, then no one is," announced by the bad guy. Or when Dash is told by his parents that everyone is special, he retorts with "that's just a way of saying that nobody is."

This movie encouraged exceptionalism in a way that was striking for a kid's movie. It actively lobbied against the idea of everybody being unique in their own way, it argued in favor of there being Nietzche-esque supermen among us who should be lifted up above the masses for the betterment of society.


I don't know if I agree that the movie was subscribing to a Rand-like belief system, but I like that the question was raised at all. When was the last time anyone came out of a Disney film debating philosophy?

Thursday, November 04, 2004

post election quantitative analysis

In the last couple of days, there have been lots of red and blue maps floating around online. Unsurprisingly, they show a vast divide between the Northeast/West and the rest of the country.

Here are some more interesting maps:

From USA Today, a county-by-county map:


From informedpublic.com, one of many snarky what-if maps:


From the New York Times, a US population density map:


...and a map weighted by electoral vote:


From a professor at Princeton, a shaded county-by-county map:

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

post election day thoughts

It looks like Bush has beaten Kerry, as of Kerry's concession speech this morning. Here's hoping no liberal Supreme Court justices kick the bucket in the next four years. Otherwise, Roe vs. Wade may be the stuff of history books.

According to some political analysts, the difference was the Bush did a good job of getting his core constituency, the religious right, to go out and vote. As a result, the higher turnout wasn't as good for Kerry as people had predicted.

Overall, nationwide voter turnout was just under 60%, which is the highest percentage turnout since Kennedy beat Nixon. Very cool, but we can still do better. I will continue to beat my dead horse about Taiwan's 80% voter turnout.

Ohio didn't close their polls until almost midnight, even though they were scheduled to close at 8pm, because the lines were up to four hours long. It's ridiculous that people have to wait that long, but I think it's awesome that the voting precincts refused to close until everyone got their chance.

For the first time, San Francisco used an instant runoff method to elect their City Supervisors. I'm a big fan of this method, since it really helps out third party candidates, and also seems like the most fair way of counting votes. Basically, everyone ranks one candidate as his/her first choice, another candidate as his/her second choice, and so on. The voter can stop ranking at any time; he/she isn't forced to rank all the candidates. Afterwards, all the first place votes are counted, and if no candidate has a majority, the lowest vote-getter is eliminated, and his/her votes are allocated to the other candidates according to the second place rankings. This continues until one candidate has a majority of the votes. The primary complaint against this method is that it's confusing. I'll conceed that lots of voters are morons, but can they really not even understand ranking their choices?

Governor Schwarzenegger is certainly making his mark on California politics. According to the polls, Proposition 66, which would have restricted the three strikes law, is likely to fail. It was showing strong support up until last week, when Arnold voiced his opposition. Granted, it also could have been the last minute ad blitz that made the difference.

Dan Gillmor says:

People say there are two Americas. I think there are at least three.

One is Bush's America: an amalgam of the extreme Christian "conservatives," corporate interests and the builders of the burgeoning national-security state.

Another is the Democratic "left": wedded to the old, discredited politics in a time that demands creative thinking.

I suspect there's a third America: members of an increasingly radical middle that will become more obvious in the next few years, tolerant of those who are different and aware that the big problems of our times are being ignored -- or made worse -- by those in power today.

That third America needs a candidate. Or, maybe, a new party.


Yes. I want my new party.

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

California gets propositioned

There were 16 statewide propositions on the ballot for this election. Consequently, the volume of useless propaganda (for decision-making purposes, anyway) that California voters have been subjected to over the past few weeks has been astounding.

I found the pamphlet sent out on behalf of Governor Arnold especially disturbing, yet amusing, with its one-liners ("Job Killing Health Care Tax!") and its handy-dandy pull-out "cheat sheet".

I myself spent most of last night looking at the "impartial" summaries and the actual text of the propositions, trying to figure out what they really meant. As a result, I felt pretty good this morning about voting on all of the state and local offices and issues.

However, after doing a pretty thorough investigation of all the third-party candidates, I abstained from voting in the presidential election.

Monday, November 01, 2004

Ju-On

Yesterday, for Halloween, a group of us got together to watch Ju-On, the Japanese horror movie that The Grudge is based on. It was certainly creepy enough, but I felt like I was waiting for a twist or a revelation of some sort which never came.

Afterwards I went and searched online for an explanation, and found this timeline which helped clear up at least the sequence of events, but I still feel like the movie doesn't hang together well. Maybe I just don't get it.

 

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