September 03, 2007
Christopher Hitchens speaks at Google in Mountain View, California
As a Googler, I have the most incredible perks, not the least of which is a level of participation in "corporate civics" that I've never enjoyed elsewhere. Among those perks is the privilege of nominating authors to speak at Google in a sponsored venue. One of my nominations, public intellectual Christopher Hitchens, spoke at our Mountain View campus about a week before my departure to New York City:
ABSTRACT
Author Christopher Hitchens discusses his book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" as a part of the Authors@Google series. The author of Why Orwell Matters and Letters to a Young Contrarian, Christopher Hitchens is a Vanity Fair contributing editor, a Slate columnist, and a regular contributor to The Atlantic Monthly. He has also written for The Nation, Granta, Harper's, The Washington Post, and is a frequent television and radio guest. Born in England, Hitchens was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he received a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics. He now lives in Washington, D.C., and he became a U.S. citizen in 2007. This event took place on August 16, 2007 at Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA.
September 05, 2006
Quote of the Day
"I'm not a conservative complaining about liberals," Rodgers says. "To me the 'greater good' is a catch phrase for people trying to force you to do what they want. And it's both sides of the political spectrum; it's not a liberal thing only. You look at our current administration. They have all kinds of greater good things. For example, they have decided what can and can't be done with embryo research. They're forcing people to follow their dictates. If you look the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, it's freedom from, not freedom to. The Bill of Rights doesn't give you a right to something, it gives you the right not to have the government do something to you."
September 04, 2006
"Lifespans soon to be decades longer" by Tom Burroughes
I'm about a month late in actually publishing a mention of my friend (and Reuters reporter) Tom Burroughes' interview with Cambridge University gerontologist Aubrey De Grey, "Lifespans soon to be decades longer", which, interestingly, seems to have been syndicated on the Indian version of Yahoo! News.
Beautiful things at the Pleasanton Highland Games
Yesterday I attended the Pleasanton Highland Games, the largest event of its kind in North America, with my friends Dale Seago and Garland Glessner. I'd missed a few of these over the last few years, and I'm likely to miss several more, so I was especially happy to have attended this one, since 1.) I serendipitously met some friends I'd not seen in years, 2.) I got to hear the Wicked Tinkers live, and 3.) I met this sweet young lady, selling handmade silver whiskey flasks:
She'll be working at the Northern California Renaissance Faire this fall; find her and say hello. Sorry, won't tell you her name, you'll have to work for it...
Quote of the Day
Libertarians should not be denying scientific fact. We should instead spend our time combatting the religious impulse of people to think the modern world is evil and that we must repent for our sins by living cruddy lives and waiting for (in their minds) our inevitable and justified doom at the hands of a wronged Gaia.
September 01, 2006
Quote of the Day
Want hot sex from a woman? Keep the relationship psycho. It worked for me when I was single. I had many long-term non-monogamous relationships that remained erotic right up until the moment she tried to claw my eyes out. It costs a lot in therapy, but boy is it sexy.
Want love and contentment? Dump the psycho and build a nest. You get to have steady sex with somebody who is not trying to claw your eyes out. Plus you get to have breakfast without any coffee cups aimed at your head.
And there's nothing like reading a book, in bed, next to somebody you love.
Joe Quirk
"Scientists Have Discovered the Food That Makes Women Lose Interest in Sex"
June 18, 2006
Scott Beiser and L. Neil Smith's "Roswell, Texas"
Scott Beiser and L. Neil Smith's Roswell, Texas is now online, serialized in webcomic fashion. I believe that my dear, recently deceased friend Chris Tame has a cameo somewhere in the comic's future.
L. Neil Smith finally does a real blog
L. Neil Smith finally does a real blog, "L. Neil Smith at Random", with comments enabled. I've long thought that Neil's writing would fit the format, and now I'm sure of it.
"John Cleese's Wine for the Confused" (2004)
One of the pleasures of having a Netflix subsription is being able to add oddball titles to my queue, click-and-forget, and receive it later as a "surprise." One such title is a short wine documentary, "John Cleese's Wine for the Confused":
Wine snobs, beware: Monty Python's witty John Cleese aims to educate the masses with this enlightening, snoot-free wine guide. Cleese guides wine novices through the basics -- finding wines you like, getting the best value, and serving and storing wine at home. His vintner's tour includes lessons in wine vocabulary and identifying subtle flavors. Not a fan of snobbery in the least, Cleese also reveals how to cork up condescending sommeliers.
Cleese has a house on the Central California coast, and decided - on a shoestring budget, which he freely admits on camera - to visit a few of the local wineries, surveying products of the handful of "great grapes" (e.g. Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir). I found the tips about finding bargains in a wine seller's shop particularly useful.
Unlike a commentator in the IMDB entry, I'm not surprised Cleese would do such a documentary: in the early 90's, working for a company in London, I found the tedium of mandatory training videos greatly lessened with Cleese as presenter. He has an impressive resume of this type of stuff.
May 30, 2006
Toddlers with Cameras: Joshua "Man Ray's" debut
So I'm at my friends' house in the East Bay, and I'm teaching their toddler son Josh how to use my Sony CyberShot digital camera. Lesson #1: pointing the camera, keeping fingers off the lens (a hard one to teach); Lesson #2: composing the scene:
OK, so he's not yet ready for the Rule of Thirds. He picks up the trick of framing a face within the viewfinder boundaries quickly though:
The young dude, I think, is ready for his own camera soon!
Quote of the Day
William Faulkner, in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, called upon writers of the future to not write merely "for the glands." Of course, at that moment, Faulkner was being rewarded for being the best writer for the glands this country has ever known. Incest, serial killing, insanity, race war, castration, burial of the dead, biblical flood, hunting bear, rape with a corn cob - Faulkner did it all. The guy played our genome like a xylophone. Faulkner, in a suddenly noble moment, called upon writers... to transcend the endocrinological. He didn't set the best example.
April 21, 2006
Quote of the Day
All of the liability problems of general aviation manufacturers were brought on by their own lawyers. They maintained that they couldn't afford to fight these cases, when in truth they couldn't afford not to. Ford fought their Pinto case to the Supreme Court and had a $125 million judgment against them thrown out of court. Nobody sues Ford capriciously anymore.
Scott Crossfield, aviation legend, who died yesterday at the age of 84 while piloting his Cessna 210
Courtesy of AVweb
March 01, 2006
Another interesting cover from my pulp collection: 1984
Here's another from my collection, a 1960 Signet Books edition of the 1949 classic of George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four:
Testing my OCR (OmniPage SE) on this back cover text:
"Which One
will YOU be in the Year
1984
Proletarian - Considered inferior and kept in total ignorance, you'll be fed lies from the Ministry of Truth, eliminated upon signs of promise or ability!
Police Guard - Chosen for lack of intelligence but superior brawn, you'll be suspicious of everyone and be ready to give your life for Big Brother, the leader you've never even seen!
Party Member - Male - Face-less mind-less, a flesh-and-blood robot with a push-button brain, you're denied love by low, taught hate by the flick of a switch!
Party Member - Female - A member of the Anti-Sex League from birth, your duty will be to smother all human emotion, and your children might not be your husband's!
Unbelievable? You'll feel differently after you've read this best-selling book of forbidden love and terror in a world many of us may live to see!
George ORWELL was born in 1903 and died in 1950. Educated at Eton, career was varied-Burma service the Imperial Police, twoyears in Paris, and teaching in England preceded the war in Spain and Home Guard membership in World War II. A frequent contributor to literary reviews, his books include Animal Farm, Burmese Days and Down and Out in Paris and London.
PUBLISHED BY THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY"
More old school book covers: "Strike From Space"
Now that I've wrapped up what turned out to be a surprisingly subtle and difficult volunteer Japanese translation job (which I'm very happy to have done, I should note), I'm going to blog a bit more for fun. Combing my bookshelves, I pulled another several titles with interesting cover copy and art. Here's one: "Strike From Space: A Megadeath Mystery" by Phyllis Schlafly and Chester Ward, 1965, Pere Marquette Press:
Interesting author blurb from the back cover, above: "Phyllis Schlafly... was a ballistics gunner and technician at the largest ammunition plant in the world." This is particularly interesting, since the WikiPedia entry for her doesn't mention this, only her academic bona fides (I'll be correcting this omission later, wearing my WikiPedia Contributor hat.) Now, "the largest ammunition plant in the world" was, at the time of publication of this book - and still remains - Lake City Army Ammunition Plant (LCAAP) in Independence, Missouri... did she actually work there?
February 21, 2006
I've caught the "Billion Monkeys" meme
I've caught the "Billion Monkeys" meme from my English blogger friend Brian Micklethwait (whom I met during my London sojourn in the early 1990's), who coined the term to describe those who take digital photographs of, well, others of those who take digital photographs of others. Here's one from my trip last spring to Beijing, a tour guide in the Forbidden City:
I must admit of course that the "Billion Monkeys" thing didn't occur to me at the time... I was simply taken with a rather attractive young Chinese woman.
November 28, 2005
It's OK if I explain the sight gag
Four weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a Halloween party in Manhattan. I wasn't prepared with a costume, unless you count my normal get-up below as, um, "Visiting Silicon Valley Guy." On the left is Perry Metzger who is, ahem, a eusocialist insect:
September 18, 2005
Day 1, Arnaud Cousergue seminar in Sacramento
I'm just about to crash soon, having come back from the first of a multi-day Bujinkan training seminar by Arnaud Cousergue of Paris (Vincennes, actually) at the Bujinkan Martial Arts Center in Sacramento, a couple of hours' drive from here.
That's Dr. Pete Lohstroh, a UC Davis reproductive biologist, and myself. Pete's interested in medical nanotechology too, by the way, but that's deliberately off topic. I really do meet cool people in this art.
The shiner I acquired Thursday night is even more pronounced in this photo, but it doesn't hurt at all anymore. On a related note, Arnaud ended the day insisting on the use of padded training weapons through the end of the year, for various reasons with which I entirely agree. To that end, on the way back from Sack-of-Tomatoes to Saint Jose, I stopped at the Home Despot near the Sacto dojo and acquired the requisite materials:
- a $1.97 bag of thin 6' bamboo rods from the Garden section
- a $1.97 6' section of 5/8" inside diameter foam copper pipe insulation
I then duct taped 3 pinky-width lengths of the bamboo together at 9-inch intervals, put that inside the foam, and placed styrofoam caps at the ends, duct taping those. I finished by taping the entire thing lengthwise.
Looks surprisingly good, and not at all like a late-night vodka fueled project. I took photos of every step of the project which I will be posting in a few days.
Time to crash now.
August 04, 2005
Dendrimers to improve chemotherapeutic delivery
An interesting blog article about the use of dendrimers in targetted drug delivery systems, sent me by Tom Burroughes in London.
University of Michigan scientists have created the nanotechnology equivalent of a Trojan horse to smuggle a powerful chemotherapeutic drug inside tumor cells – increasing the drug's cancer-killing activity and reducing its toxic side effects.
Previous studies in cell cultures have suggested that attaching anticancer drugs to nanoparticles for targeted delivery to tumor cells could increase the therapeutic response. Now, U-M scientists have shown that this nanotechnology-based treatment is effective in living animals.
This type of news carries a special type of urgency for me, as I've recently been informed that my good friend Chris Tame, in London, has been diagnosed with epithelioid angiosarcoma of the bones (spine & hip so far.) His oncologists are working hard to find the primary source of the cancer. In the meantime, any new developments in the effectiveness of chemotherapy with short & medium term time horizons are of great personal interest to me and my friends.
August 03, 2005
"I want to send you money" for Accelerando...
...the digital (PDF) version I'm reading now, but Charlie Stross tells his readers not to do so. I will, however, be buying several copies from Amazon as gifts to friends. Damn it's good!
June 03, 2005
Biogenontologist Aubrey de Grey, Stanford University, 8 June 2005
Cambridge biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey will be speaking next week at Stanford University, on "Why the prospect of dramatic life extension matters now." Talk will occur Wednesday evening 7:00-8:30 PM, 8 June 2005, at the Clark Center Auditorium. Thanks to Tyler Emerson for forwarding this to me; I do plan to attend.
May 22, 2005
Quote of the Day
...reading for pleasure is pretty much the single most important determinant (and correlant) of later success in any fields involving thinking, planning, writing, and intellectual effort. Those who don't read as children are mostly lost forever...they'll simply never catch up with those of us who read books every night.
April 02, 2005
A quiet moment in Beihai Park
One afternoon last week I rented an electric boat and plied around the north lake in Beihai Park. After returning the craft to the boathouse, I came across this guy doing taijiquan near the shore, practicing a jian form:
When he'd finished several iterations of the same form, he walked over to the bench where a couple of older women had been watching intently. He then started pushing the tip of the jian into the bench near them! What the hell?
Ah... it was a collapsing practice piece, neatly converting into an 8-inch assembly, which he then slipped into the carry pouch his wife held out for him. Neat! I wanted one of those jian then and there, but didn't have time left in the trip to shop for one. Rest assured it's on my shopping list for my next Beijing visit.
March 22, 2005
Don Angier aikijiujitsu seminar, 19-20 March 2005, at Aikido of Diablo Valley
I mentioned here a couple of years ago that I attended a seminar given by Don Angier of Yanagi Ryu Aiki Jiu Jitsu. I missed last year's event in northern Californa, but I managed to make this year's event last weekend. I attended both days (as did another Bujinkan practicioner), and met one other Bujinkan student during the Sunday session at Aikido of Diablo Valley.
As has always been the case with Don's seminars, I enjoyed it immensely. Both days were Yanagi-style taijutsu training, no weapons this time (e.g. the jojutsu we did in April 2003.)
The first day, we did 3-man training involving breaking from 2-attacker both-arm wrist grabs (morote in aikido parlance). The second day, we did 2-man Yanagi "kiri dori" with reversals. Both days ended with recap training.
As usual, the training was incredibly useful: the principles of Angier's art are shared with our own, with an interestingly different emphasis on how to convey them. I didn't attend with the intent of "learning their art" - that really only happens with core Yanagi students, in their dojo environment, as is the case with us and our art - but what I do expect, as I've experienced in previous years' training with the Yanagi folks, is that I'll be able to see aspects of our own art from an outside perspective.
One solid claim I can make for training with these guys is that I'm forced to re-examine all the "unclean" (or sloppy) elements in my own movement.
Really, I can't recommend highly enough that Bujinkan students take the time to attend a seminar by this incredible 73 year old practicioner of a rare Japanese family art.
I should also add that the people I trained with, mostly aikidoka, were very good training partners, and incredibly welcoming, which made the experience all the more rewarding.
February 20, 2005
Neil Smith calls Mike Lorrey out on the floor
On a mailing list I frequent, list owner Mike Lorrey took an unfair swipe at an old friend of mine, libertarian science fiction novelist L. Neil Smith. I forward the message in its entirety, and Neil took the time to respond to Mike in an essay released today, "Under False Colors."
Mike has quickly responded by taking the argument to his own blog, in a post counter-titled "Under Honest Colors."
January 22, 2005
December 28, 2004
Quote of the Day
I get the occasional numb-nut. They say, "I can see how you can shoot ugly wild boars, but not a beautiful deer." Oh, a little more Hitlerism is just what we need. This can live and this can die according to my whims. Eat me, you fuck! Here's the truth so you can print it in bold, capital red letters: The cuter the critter, the sweeter the meat.
Ted Nugent
Interview in April 2004 Maxim magazine, p104
December 21, 2004
Quote of the Day
People who will not take the trouble to raise children should not have them.
Robert A. Heinlein
Podkayne of Mars
December 12, 2004
Monica White on Bujinkan training in London
Yesterday, I attended Dale Seago's "Return from Japan" seminar in San Francisco. I'm reminded that my friend Monica attended a Bujinkan seminar in London, and had some good things to say about her training experience.
November 10, 2004
"Getting Into The Launch Business: The Amroc Story"
Most of us are familiar with the events marking the Ansari X Prize winning flights of SpaceDev's SpaceShip One recently. Far fewer, however, know of the story of the American Rocket Company (AMROC), the pioneering company whose intellectual property lives on in that prize-winning ship: the revolutionary hybrid rocket engine that sent it to the edge of space, twice. Read on...
November 08, 2004
Guess I'll be seeing "The Incredibles" soon
The New York Times is pushing hard on campus to pick up new student subscriptions for the paper edition: for the last few weeks, they've been giving away free copies, many of which end up as seat blotters on rainy benches. I picked up a copy last Thursday, and glanced through a fascinating and typically snide review of the Disney/Pixar flick "The Incredibles" which opened this last weekend. One of the reviewer's complaints was that the film apparently expressed, under the veil of comedy, an unrepentent disdain for mediocrity. The reviewer speculated that Ayn Rand was a likely influence on the filmmakers. Intruiging!
This morning, the first thing my o-chem professor asked me in lab was, "Have you seen 'The Incredibles'?" He was raving about it. I guess I should check this film out. Anyone seen it yet?
Anton Sherwood's blog revamped
Anton Sherwood has moved his musings to a blogging system with a commenting facility and much friendlier navigation. No trivial feat, given that he's been blogging (in one place) since February 2002... this meant converting over 1400 postings! Take a look.
August 30, 2004
Quote of the Day
Q. How can you, an anarchist, be a lawyer?
A. My father was a physician. That doesn't mean he believed in disease.
August 23, 2004
Jeffrey L "the Hunter" Jordan is freed
Jeffrey L "the Hunter" Jordan is freed, with a few hundred dollars' fines (and months of expense and a lost job and other anguish,) and even gets to keep his own property. I first posted about this 8 months ago. I'm glad it's (mostly) over, with the exception of his upcoming expected fight with Verizon over their cowardly treatment of him. More news as it happens.
By the way, I did notice the glaring omission of the National Rifle Association in the list of those organizations that assisted Jordan. Figures.
August 20, 2004
Monica White's Firefly article in The Atlasphere
Monica White has really gotten the Firefly bug: today, her extended recommendation of the series, "The Ascendance of Firefly,' was published on the Objectivist culture site The Atlasphere. It's particularly interesting to see how a Joss Whedon fan site has reacted to Monica's just-release piece. See also Monica's short announcement of the piece on her own blog, and the interesting speed with which some Whedon fans have engaged her in some image-correcting commentary. I love the Web.
August 17, 2004
Orkut sucks, time to move along
A half year ago, I was invited to join the Orkut social networking service by my old friend Perry Metzger. A half year later, I've decided that it's an evolutionary dead end: for a service "affiliated with Google," it's unusually clunky, feature-poor, primitive, and dreadfully unreliable. I've made a few good friends through it, however, and am glad of the experience, which has been useful and informative.
Interestingly, in the last couple of weeks I've gotten email from a few people I know through Orkut, inviting me to the Multiply network, an Orkut competitor which seems vastly superior in its execution. I'd ignored those invitations, being busy with other things, but tonight I took my friend Shannon Kaplan up on her invitation, and am impressed at the sophistication of the interface. I'm not convinced I need all their features - I already have my own self-administered blog, for example - but for the general public, it seems at first approximation to be an incredibly well-integrated suite.
So, if you receive an email entitled "Russell Whitaker invites you to keep in touch on Multiply," don't automatically assume to be spam. Multiply has an interesting feature - apparently driven by Orkut user dissatisfaction - with which Orkut users can export their entire network of contacts over to Multiply in order to generate invitations to the rival service. Better I should use it now, before Orkut programs logic to block that data export.
Of course, if Orkut's programmers had been sufficiently on the ball to quickly develop such program logic, they'd also have been sufficiently agile to develop new features demanded by their users... such as forum threading up to 1990 newsreader standards, perhaps?
L. Neil Smith on the "Hollow Woman"
I, like L. Neil Smith, didn't know until recently that the Statue of Liberty had been completely shut down since 11 September 2001, only recently re-opened "following about $7,000,000 worth of police state alterations." In an irony of circumstance that inspired the article's title, "Hollow Woman," the re-opening ceremony was presided over by a real-life hollow woman, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, whom Neil knew from her days in the Colorado Libertarian Party.
August 14, 2004
Oh, yes: tip o' the hat to Julia Child
While I'm enthusing about food, I should point out that Julia Child would have been 92 years old today. She died yesterday, however. My maternal grandmother was born 3 months after Child's birth date; I plan to visit her in a few weeks, I'm reminded. I'm also reminded that the women in my family live a long time, though not nearly long enough, my standard being centuries, but that's of purely tangential interest here.
The modern crop of food divas and divos (the humorless Martha Stewarts and the gimicky "Bam!" Emerils) owe a debt of gratitude to Child, an eccentric of the first order (anyone else remember the Dan Ackroyd parodies?) She was a woman with a very interesting personal history (reminding me of Martha Raye, "actress and denture wearer," the only civilian buried at the U.S. Special Forces cemetary at Fort Bragg), which includes having been an OSS officer during WWII.
Child is quoted as having said in an AP interview in 1989:
"What's dangerous and discouraging about this era is that people really are afraid of their food... sitting down to dinner is a trap, not something to enjoy. People should take their food more seriously. Learn what you can eat and enjoy it thoroughly."
Sounds like someone who lived her life fully. Too bad she couldn't have stuck around a few more centuries to enjoy it even more thoroughly.
By the way, Child's original TV set kitchen is preserved at the Smithsonian.
August 03, 2004
My visit to the Quent Cordair Gallery on Saturday
About three weeks ago, I wrote that my friend Monica White had indirectly informed me (through her blogroll) of the existence of the Quent Cordair Fine Art Gallery in Burlingame, California, about a mile from San Francisco International Airport.
Well, on Saturday - on a whim - I suggested to Peggy that we head up to the gallery for the short remainder of the afternoon. We arrived about two hours before closing... and left about an hour after closing.
I'd called ahead to confirm that the gallery was, as indicated on their website, indeed open for the afternoon. When we arrived, a friendly lady greeted us and, upon hearing my voice, recognized me from my call-ahead. When I mentioned my name, she remarked that it sounded familiar, and that she'd actually - somehow - come across my blog recently and had even recommended that a friend of hers named "Carter" (whose contact I welcome) contact me about gun-related issues! I was happily astounded. I quickly found out that this friendly - and sharp - lady is Linda Zimmerman, the director of the gallery.
Linda spent the better part of three hours talking with me about the purpose of the gallery, the only one of its kind in the world, specializing strictly in high-quality painting and sculpture of the Romantic Realist variety (see Ayn Rand's "Romantic Manifesto" for an in-depth introduction to the genre.) I was deeply impressed at the operation, the selection, and the director. The storefront has had 8 years of profitable operation, but its recent years of online operation alone keep it sufficiently profitable that it can continue in business, without diluting its collection with low-quality pieces which would otherwise meet "school of art" requirements or with technically high-quality pieces which are outside those stated requirements.
The gallery itself has on display about one-third its total collection, the other two-thirds of which is in storage, but pieces of which can be viewed by the seriously interested. The walls are arrayed with paintings, as would be expected, and a number of bronzes are also on display. Linda encourages a healthy, tactile approach to the sculptures: touch them. At one point in our long, animated chat, she took my right hand and placed it on the hip of this statue, "Gratitude" by Danielle Anjou:
This is a lovely piece, and was strangely reminincent of the 1987 Boris Vallejo cover art for the Robert A. Heinlein novel "To Sail Beyond the Sunset," itself a triumphalist riff on Sandro Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus." I love it, probably as much as Monica White loves Bill Mack's alto-relief sculpture "Forever," which was not on display the day I visited... but which I hope Monica can eventually acquire.
Linda and I talked each other's ears off, happily, while Peggy enjoyed one of the overstuffed leather couches near the front of the gallery. We talked about the business of art, and the multifarious ways the gallery has connected Romantic Realist artists, including the recently immigrated Chinese master Han Wu Shen, with deeply appreciative customers, including passionate-but-temporarily-impecunious college students who've arranged payment plans for their "must have" pieces. We talked about a great many other things, with most of the conversation led by Linda cheerily educating me in the business of her gallery, and with me responding with semi-articulate "Wows!" and "Cool!"
I do plan to spend quite a bit more time in the gallery, and may even hold a party of friends there in the near future. Yes, I did say "party"... anyone interested? It would be a great excuse to gather a few dozen of my closest friends and acquaintances in a fantastic setting near the near San Francisco. This is a very real possibility, since Linda did say that the gallery encourages people to hold their parties there. I'm thinking sometime in September, when my good friend Tom Burroughes is in town visiting from London with his girlfriend: first a morning sailing on the Bay (Tom's a qualified yachtsman), then shooting at the range, then a catered affair that night - after cleaning up - at the Quent Cordair Fine Art gallery... sounds like good living to me.
August 02, 2004
"Fighting," by Peter King
On our dojo mailing list today, sometimes-training-buddy (and all around good guy) Irishman Stephen Ewart forwards this excellent essay, "Fighting," written by the U.K's Peter King, a superb Bujinkan practicioner and teacher with whom my friend Monica White has the privilege of training in London. An excerpt:
Hatsumi Sensei criticised martial artists who act like they are dangerous animals. He said that man has been able to use his intelligence to be able to kill dangerous animals in the world. Such people will be defeated – in a way that they had not expected, because they were outwitted by brain and not muscle. When Takamatsu Sensei was in China he was known as the Mongolian Tiger because of his martial prowess. However on his return to Japan, a friend said that he was more like a Japanese cat. Takamatsu Sensei was happy to agree. He said that, in China, it was necessary for him to be fierce like a tiger, but that now that he was back in Japan it was not. He added that women like cats and would often stroke them. Although said in humour, it illustrates the need to be hard only when needed, and then be able to return to gentleness.
Time to prune down the blogroll
I've started tonight on the job of cleaning up the over-long blogroll on the right side of this blog's main page. I'm taking the example of Monica White and moving toward a shorter, annotated blogroll. If you're a friend of mine, and your name has disappeared from the main page, it's only because I'm now choosing to include links to friends a.) with blogs that are b.) actively maintained. More pruning later, along with some annotation.
August 01, 2004
Happy 50th Birthday, Michael Badnarik
Orkut.com and Chris Claypoole both inform me that Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik hits the half-century mark today. Congrulations on your continued survival!
July 29, 2004
July 27, 2004
Extropianism and revisionist history
A few weeks ago, on a mailing list I run, it was reported to me by a good friend that the present management of the Extropy Institute disavows free-market libertarianism as its politico-economic root. As a matter of fact, we're told, extropianism was never about liberty and its deepest ramifications. To those people, I have a large number of examples from the early history of the extropian movement which contradict that claim, such as this reprint of a short declaration by law professor Tom Bell, writing in 1988 as "T.O. Morrow," a piece called "Economics and Politics" (words in brackets below added by me for clarification):
As information processing systems, good economic and political systems must meet the same standards that apply to any of their kind; they must achieve their ends efficiently. Researchers such as Friedrich Hayek have demonstrated that the most efficient economic and political systems are those that exert a minimum of control, allowing spontaneous orders to flourish. Economic and political systems must furthermore advance (trans)human ends. Extropy [magazine] takes the [editorial] point of view that these two qualifications are entirely compatible; the most efficient economic and political systems are those that maximize human liberty. Thus the best economic systems are free market, and the best political systems libertarian. (Libertarians assert that the state, if one is neccessary, should permit all acts except assault, theft and fraud.) Extropy [magazine] will pursue such free market and libertarian analyses of economic and political systems, working toward the day when economic and political systems serve us, rather than we them.
(T.0. Morrow, '88-'98. All Rights Reserved. Please attach this paragraph to all copies. Fully attributed noncommercial use of this document hereby permitted.)
This was, as mentioned, published in the paper version of Extropy magazine (a copy of which I own), and is notated "online version, edited Nov. '96." I plan to publish many more such examples as I run across them, at my convenience. Why? Well, while I do acknowledge that the term "extropian" has been diluted to the extent it's indistinguishable from standard socialist transhumanism - and this is a tragic thing - I will not stand for the historical revisionism being pushed by some of those in the existing "extropian" movement... especially since I've been around that movement from the very beginning, and will not drink the Kool-Aid.
July 24, 2004
"Diminished Capacity": Perry Metzger has a blog now
My old friend Perry Metzger gave in today and finally started a blog. Now to convince him to add a comment mechanism...
Quote of the Day
First of all, the Founding Fathers loathed a democracy, calling it a tyranny of the majority. The United States is not a democracy. The United States is a constitutional Republic based on private party and individual rights. In the 1860s we passed the 13th amendment, which presumably eliminated slavery and it took well over 100 years to erase the racial hatred between the whites and the blacks. How does the American government think that they can go into another country and
override thousands of years of culture? It is not our job to export anything except products and services.
July 19, 2004
It's largely about usability
My friend Anton complains about the lack of comments on his blog:
In two months and a bit since opening comments, this blog received just eight, of which half were mere applause; and Blogger makes handling comments a bit of a nuisance. So I've turned commenting back off; and incorporated the four substantive comments as addenda to the original posts, which is what I do anyway when someone bothers to write to me.
It's because Blogger makes handling comments a pain in the ass that most of us don't bother, Anton, and nobody I know will submit comments by a separate channel (email in another software client) for possible posting at your convenience later. That's not how users expect the mechanism of a blog to work. You can continue to bitch about what other people will or won't do, complaining publicly about it, or you can take the actions necessary to actually induce people to leave comments: set yourself up using a genuine blogging system.
July 15, 2004
"Jews and Guns" by Robert J. Avrech
Jackie D at Samizdata reprints a recent article by Hollywood screenwriter Robert J. Avrech, "Jews and Guns":
Ariel [Avrech's recently deceased son] was always amazed at how many Jews - Shomer Shabbos Jews - aligned themselves with the advocates of gun control, in reality a movement to banish the private ownership of guns by lawful citizens. During the Los Angeles riots of 1992, Karen and I, Ariel and Leda were inside a film theatre. Abruptly, an angry mob congregated outside; soon they were trying to break down the doors. Trapped inside, we were all terrified. I held Leda in my arms; she shivered like a frightened rabbit. Karen held Ariel's hand.
"Don't worry," I said with false confidence, "the police will be here soon."
But the police did not arrive that night, nor did they protect the city from arson and widespread looting. In fact, we watched in disbelief as news cameras captured images of police officers standing idly by while looters gleefully committed their crimes.
A few days later, I bought a gun.
I bought a gun because I realized that the day might come again when the people who were sworn to protect us would once again choose not to.
I also recommend, of course, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.
July 14, 2004
"Terminal Ballistics Comparison in Water Media"
I was told of this by a poster to the smith2004-discuss list, an incredibly meticulous comparison of the performances of a number of common ammunition types: "Terminal Ballistics Comparison in Water Media", a compilation of many years of data generated by 84 year old Carmon Crapson (published by Stephen Ricciardelli.)
June 25, 2004
June 23, 2004
"Why does Koko want to move to Maui?"
The famous Koko the lowland gorilla lives a few miles north of where I'm sitting. Apparently her keepers are looking for an excuse to move from Woodside, California to Maui.
"Letters of Ayn Rand"
A few days ago I picked up a pristine copy of the book "Letters of Ayn Rand" which is a fascinating comilation of Rand's personal and business correspondance over a span of decades. The book seems to be selling everywhere at remainder prices, about US $6.
Austin, Texas becoming an LP powerhouse
Melissa Seaman passes along this interesting bit of local TV news coverage of the strength of the Libertarian Party in Austin, Texas, home of national candidate Michael Badnarik.
June 21, 2004
"SpaceShipOne, Government Zero"
This is the in-flight face of the first non-government, privately-financed test pilot to earn American astronaut's wings:
The full story here. Now go out and buy a copy of Victor Koman's "Kings of the High Frontier."
June 17, 2004
Quote of the Day
The success of a party can be determined by the number of gatecrashers. And we do have friends who've been knocking away on the virtual doors of the cartel. MadMan is devising a logical test of libertarianism. Get ready to jump through the hoop and clear the hurdles!
Any more wanting to join us in the battle against the evil forces of socialism, illogic, and unfreedom? Drop me a line.
June 09, 2004
Quote of the Day
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
Ronald Reagan
June 05, 2004
Maybe twitch games *do* help some new shooters
Today's the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. I'm reminded that a couple of weeks ago, a couple of friends of mine and I went shooting at a rifle range in northern California, taking a number of weapons including an M1 Garand rifle which probably saw action in WWII. Here, my friend Andy Chen, a brand new shooter (and 18 y/o college classmate), fires my other friend's Garand:
This was Andy's first time out shooting... and on steel reactive targets set out at 100 meters - after having been briefed on safety and weapon operation - he kept up with us two trained, experienced shooters, at least on the sandbag rests. He's spent his high school years reading military history, and knows an incredible amount of factual data on weapons history. He's also used to playing first-person shooter games - in which I've never been interested, thinking them useless for training - causing me to start to re-think my opinions of twitch games.
An older gentleman at an adjacent shooting stall took some time to discuss the Garand with Andy, pointing out that he had ordered his own Garand (which he was also shooting) from the U.S. federal government's Civilian Marksmanship Program, which I've heard about over the years, though I'd bought my own past two Garands from commercial sources.
I'm encouraging Andy to join a local CMP-affiliated club and shoot a match this summer, so that he can be eligible to buy at least a "rack grade" rifle for as low as $350... shipped Fedex directly to his door (yes, they do that)! I don't see Garands selling at gun shows for less than around $800 nowadays. Here's a very detailed and interesting account, with photos, of the experiences of two CMP participants in the purchase and shooting of their own CMP Garands.
It's especially worth noting, for California residents, that a Garand is "Kalifornia legal", making it an excellent rifle to keep locked in the trunk of one's car... just in case. Also note that a number of companies (such as Smith Enterprises) do "tanker conversions" to shorten the overall length, and one can convert the weapon to .308 caliber.
June 02, 2004
Barbara Branden, author of "The Passion of Ayn Rand"
I had the pleasure of first meeting Barbara Branden very briefly at the November 1987 Future of Freedom Conference (FoFCon) in Culver City, California, but didn't engage her in conversation, since she was on her way to a talk at that convention centered around "The Passion of Ayn Rand," her biography of novelist Ayn Rand, with whom she had been associated professionally and personally for a number of decades. Her book had been published the year before, and I'd bought my own copy as soon as it hit the bookstores (this was the pre-Amazon era).
At the end of March this year, a few weeks ago, I finally got the chance to chat with Barbara in a comfortable venue where she was wasn't being shuttled around to talks, in the course of other business: her apartment in southern California. What a lovely, intelligent, funny and benevolent lady she is! I must once again thank my friend Glenn Cripe, who had business to conduct with her that afternoon, for allowing me to tag along with his crew, and of course to Barbara for her warm hospitality... and for autographing that book I bought 18 years ago.
C-SPAN archive coverage of the Libertarian Party national convention
I found out from posters to the smith2004-discuss list this morning that C-SPAN keeps video archives of recent shows available for downloading. A search for "libertarian" on their website yields all the video coverage of the recent Libertarian Party nominating convention in Atlanta along with a follow-up interview (which I'm playing now) with the newly nominated presidential candidate Michael Badnarik.
Quote of the Day
All of us must begin telling everyone we know—especially if they're not libertarians—that if they're fed up with this mess the Republicans have made in Iraq and Afghanistan, if they want to see the USA Patriot Act go down in flames, along with all the unconstitutional intrusions and limitations that it has inflicted on us, if they want to see drug laws, the income tax, and federal gun laws repealed, and if they don't believe life under a Kerry Administration would be any better than it has been under Bush, their only option is to see both "major" parties shocked and embarrassed by a high turnout for Michael Badnarik.
May 31, 2004
A warm welcome to Yazad Jal
One of the benefits of being myself - being open about my passions and not worrying overmuch about getting along with everyone - is that occasionally, someone I've never heard from introduces himself or herself and extends a hand in friendship, knowing who I am and what I stand for.
This happened again today, this time from somewhere I'd least expected: India, in the form of an articulate fellow named Yazad Jal, a thoroughgoing and studious anarchocapitalist, who'd taken note of me from a couple of running battles I'd been having with a few people on the Atheists community on Orkut.
After taking a quick look at Yazad's Orkut profile, and seeing immediately that he didn't seem like a flake (believe me, I've met a couple of crazies in the last year), I checked out Yazad's blog. I'm impressed: he's a very solid, intelligent, articulate and funny individual who's been writing fairly regularly for a couple of years, and has some interesting things to say about the political and economic problems of India. Visit his blog and make friends. If you're a fellow Orkuteer, introduce yourself to him and make friends there.
May 30, 2004
Monica White launches her blog!
The lovely Monica White informs me a few minutes ago that she has a blog, Th'inkwell. I'm really happy to see it! Welcome to the blogosphere, Monica!
Michael Badnarik wins Libertarian Party nomination
Michael Lorrey reports on Orkut community Libertarians the results a few minutes ago of the presidential candidate nomination at the national convention in Atlanta, Georgia:
LP 3rd ballot256 249 423 Michael Badnarik winner
246 244 Gary Nolan
258 285 344 Aaron Russo
xxx 005 011 NOTA [None Of The Above]
015 othersAll single digit vote candidates dropped on 1st ballot.
NOTA is never dropped.
Nolan is dropped on 2nd ballot.
Shock. Badnarik was thought to be trailing in third place.
Nolan speaks to convention and endorses Badnarik.I'm happy, I like Mike, I met him in November at the LPNH convention, where he gave one of his Constitution classes.
I'm happy too: these results give me some confidence that the Libertarian Party is serious about its founding principles. Congratulations to Badnarik! I'm looking forward to seeing whom he chooses as running mate... I hope he doesn't choose Nolan in a quid pro quo for having thrown his support to Badnarik after the 2nd round of voting.
May 28, 2004
Happy birthday to Tom Burroughes!
Happy birthday to Tom Burroughes! I hope it's a good day for sailing, mate.
May 25, 2004
Fantastic scented candles at giveaway prices
An old friend of mine, Redvelvet (who doesn't keep in contact as well as she should!) sent me email last week announcing that she would be displaying some of her most recent products, including scented candles, at a San Francisco house cum ad hoc art gallery. So, my g/f and I headed up to the City for some good and outrageously low priced dim sum in the Sunset district, then motored over to the neighborhood where she was working.. where we spent half an hour scrounging for parking.
We found the funky house where she was working, first encountering "artists" of the type one usually finds in the Haight district, then found Christina, who'd been given a corner slot on a semi-indoor/semi-outdoor veranda. I introduced her to my g/f, and exchanged "how've ya been doin'?" gossip for a while. Turns out she had a bellydancing accident a couple of months ago - she's not explained to me yet what that means - and decided to start a cool little business while she's looking for work in the field she's re-trained for recently, digital circuit layout (her first degree is in theoretical mathematics).
I was stunned at the dozens of fantastic candles she had on display. I and everyone who stopped by to snap up candles noted that these types of candles usually cost a multiple - 2 to 4 times - what she was charging. So, I'm telling you, my friends, about this (though I get no cut of her sales at all) because I like Christina and I think these candles sell themselves... see for yourself.
May 24, 2004
"We do get to take one home with us, right?"
My friend Peter Chang called a few minutes ago to let me know he was getting ready for a 100-mile bike ride/race in Tahoe in a few weeks, and mentioned along the way that he'd been asked to play the male of an Asian couple in a Jaguar television commercial. Here are pics from the recent filming; his "wife" Lily Chai is certainly a lovely woman!
"Oh. My. God."
This was sent me yesterday by my good friend Tom Burroughes in London, who gave me permission to reprint here:
Hi Russell, you remember my friend Martin who came over to California back in 1995? Well, he did a crazy thing today -- he went to Lord's cricket ground in north London, and as a "dare", took his clothes off and ran across the pitch before getting booked by the police, all the while producing pandamonium in the crowd.Oh. My. God.
Tom follows up that, "I checked the cricket reports on two channels and I have not come across the incident although I notice the television channels often tend to brush such stuff [aside]." He says that Martin was hit with a small fine and given a warning by the police. Anyone hear about this incident? Monica?
May 19, 2004
Lecture: "The Artificial Synapse Chip: Towards an Electronic Prosthetic Retina"
My thanks to my longtime friend (I avoid the term "old friend" for such a young woman) Kennita Watson for alerting me to this lecture at Stanford on 23 June 2004: "The Artificial Synapse Chip: Towards an Electronic Prosthetic Retina" by Harvey A. Fishman, M.D., Ph.D, Stanford University School of Medicine, the Director of Ophthalmic Tissue Engineering and Chief Ophthalmology Resident in the department of Ophthalmology.
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the most common form of severe and irreversible blindness in the U.S. Our research program consists of a highly interdisciplinary effort between physicians, engineers, and scientists to develop a neural interface that will connect the output from a digital camera to individual retinal cells in patients with AMD, thus bypassing injured cells.
I really wish I could make this lecture, but I have a bioanthropology final exam during the very time slot this lecture occurs (6:15pm for dinner at the hospital cafeteria, 7:30-8:30pm for the lecture). If you, the reader, can attend I'd love to hear your impressions of the event.
By the way, this sounds like a skillset for the type of research physician I find really interesting:
Dr. Fishman's area of expertise is translational research that uses a multidisciplinary approach to develop novel therapies for blinding diseases in the eye – in particular, Age-Related Macular Degeneration. His research bridges the gaps between tissue engineering, surface science, nanofabrication, chemistry, neuroscience and retinal transplantation biology in Ophthalmology. His background in new technologies and medical science is diverse including bioMEMS, chip-based microfluidics and confocal and time-lapse microscopy, neuroscience/nerve cell regeneration and macular diseases in Ophthalmology. He has made contributions in the fields of microfluidics, laser-induced fluorescence detection, separation science, and biosensors.
May 18, 2004
Quote of the Day
I imagine respirocytes as minuscule objects consisting of roughly 18 billion atoms arranged in small balls about a thousandth of a millimeter in diameter. Each respirocyte is a tiny pressurized gas tank equipped with small pumps. Respirocytes are nanobots that move with the blood. In the body's periphery, they release oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide. In the lungs, they do the opposite, recharging themselves with oxygen. The exchange of gases is regulated by minute sensors. Though the respirocytes are modeled on red blood corpuscles, they transport oxygen two hundred times more efficiently than the natural item. A small syringe-full of respirocytes could carry as much oxygen as your entire bloodstream.
Robert A. Freitas Jr
28 July 2000
May 13, 2004
Quote of the Day
I was lead to believe that fidelity was about genital exclusivity. It took a long time to realize that infidelity is about lying and not abiding by (or re-negotiating) interpersonal contracts.
It's been a long journey. Now I know that I can never again promise exclusivity (even if I in fact have only one partner). I cannot trust myself to live up to that promise and therefore cannot expect any future partner to trust such a promise.
What I can promise is total honesty. I want a partner with whom I can share my feelings, my attractions, my crushes. Most of these never get acted out anyway.
If a woman wants genital exclusivity, all she has to do is keep me sexually exhausted. :-)
Richard Birney-Smith
May 12, 2004
Happy Survival Day to Michael and Neil
I'm given to understand that as of today, it's been an integer number of years since the parturitions of my buddies Michael Reed and L. Neil Smith. In other words, happy birthday guys! Keep surviving!
May 11, 2004
Quote of the Day
...when I saw Vlad in Carlsbad he patted my stomach and said big (fat) men make great fighters, then smiled and said they can't run away like everyone else so they have to be...
Clayton
May 09, 2004
Linus Pauling Research Notebooks
This is pretty cool: scans of Linus Pauling's Research Notebooks taken from 1922 to 1994 (he lived 1901-1994).
As with many scientists, Linus Pauling utilized bound notebooks to keep track of the details of his research as it unfolded. A testament to the remarkable length and diversity of Dr. Pauling's career, the Pauling Papers holdings include forty-six research notebooks spanning the years of 1922 to 1994 and covering any number of the scientific fields in which Dr. Pauling involved himself. In this regard, the notebooks contain many of Pauling's laboratory calculations and experimental data, as well as scientific conclusions, ideas for further research and numerous autobiographical musings.
Quote of the Day
Well, it didn't take long for this to happen. We've been "adopted" by a stray dog. This is Pesky.
I found him at our gate, shivering and obviously starving, a couple of days ago. At first, it was a toss-up: have him put to sleep, or try to nurse him back to health. In the end, his sweet disposition won me over. If he's this nice of a dog when he's near death, he must be a genuinely nice dog. I'm keeping a watchful eye on him, however, just in case he starts to show menace. One of the side benefits of being always armed is that I can be comfortable taking controlled risks with something like an unknown dog. In an unarmed society, there would be only one route for dogs like Pesky - some gov-goon would show up and either shoot him on the spot, or lock him up for a few days until he was gassed.
May 05, 2004
Russian Systema Seminar in San Francisco, Saturday 8 May 2004
Last night in the dojo, our teacher Dale Seago inquired as to who might be attending this coming Saturday's Systema seminar to be given by Kwan Lee at Mountain Lake Park from 10am - 3pm. I'd missed the announcement from a couple of weeks ago:
I'm not in the habit of recommending other martial arts' seminars: to date, the only exception has been for those taught by Donald Angier, Soke of Yanagi ryu.Russian Systema, however, is worth checking out. It's the closest thing I've yet seen outside "the Booj" in terms of movement, concepts, "feeling", and philosophy to what Hatsumi sensei has been trying to get across to us. To get a better sense of what I'm talking about, check out some of the discussions [here].
I'm going to be at this one myself, and I hope to see some of you there as well.
-- Dale
If I'm recovered from a hip bruise I somehow picked up in training last night, I might consider attending myself.
April 29, 2004
Quote of the Day
When Monica and I spent some time in Malaysia it was an interesting experience.
We were in the capital, KL. Something to know about Malaysia is that it is the most Westernised Muslim country. As an example, people from the fully fundamental places that want to experience 'Western Decadance' will be allowed to go there by their government because it is not a secular country under the surface.
Most of my recollections about it were negative. I was there with a Chinese friend. Something to note is that Malaysia has three predominant cultures - Malay, Indian and Chinese - in that order of population. Wealth and power, however, goes in the opposite direction with the 3-5% of Chinese owning most of the country.
There's a major reason for this. The Chinese people (on the whole of course) work damn hard, and the Malays don't - they don't need to. There are laws saying that there must be X% of Bumis (the local name for Muslim Malays) working in every business and other such crap.
I also tried to put an ad in the local paper but couldn't because it needed to go to a government office to be "checked" before being printed - they had true government censorship.
As to the people, I'd never seen so many women covered up before. In Australia there are many Muslim women around so you can get used to it even if you don't like it. Seeing this many in a place that for all other appearances was Western (ie: in the malls with Nike stores or in the KFCs) was weird. (Incidentally the fashion was to wear a dark dress with a white head scarf... when you look down the mall over their heads at them (I'm tall and they are generally short), and when they cluster, they look like lots of little bowling pins ready for a big bowling ball :)
We grilled (nicely of course, just in case) a taxi driver as to why