Everything2 New Writeups

Billionaire Bill Koch: I plan to put people in jail (idea)

2009-12-28T20:22:32Z

It is rare that American high society reaches the sort of ironic self-awareness that it did on Dec. 15, 2009. On that day Wine Spectator, a magazine devoted to fine wines and the blowhards who love them, published its January 2010 issue. On the cover is an old, pasty white man, wearing an outdated navy double-breasted jacket with gold cufflinks and white yachting pants. In his hands is a bottle of presumably rare, mind-bogglingly expensive wine; it is beside the main headline for this issues, "The Crusade Against Counterfeits". And beneath it, to the right, is possibly the most hilarious, revealing caption I've ever seen:

"Billionaire Energy Exec Bill Koch: "I plan to put people in Jail."

Let's parse this. A man who is personally worth a thousand thousand thousand dollars, who upon further reading is revealed as an oil/energy company executive, literally wants to subject people to years and years of ass rape and restraint chairs for having the gall…

The last Postal Service worker cleans out his desk (idea)

2009-12-28T19:50:41Z

"It's a whole new world now, Gabriel," said the Inspector. "No need for violence."

Gabriel pulls the name tag from the breast of his shirt and folds it into his pocket. Through the window he watches the sun, starting to melt the snow.

Reverse Psychology (idea)

2009-12-28T18:33:35Z

(Disclaimer: Your mileage may vary)

The idea is that we all have internal (sometimes subconscious) conversations with ourselves about why we do things. We have self-justifications, self-rationalizations, what we believe are personal preferences, and what we believe are things that external forces are forcing us to do.

When we do activity X, we may tell ourselves that there are many reasons for doing X, but one of those reasons is the most important - the primary reason we use in our internal conversation to convince ourselves to continue to do activity X. That reason may be because we think it's fun or that reason may be because we are being forced to do it.

When a parent orders a child to eat his vegetables, the idea is that the child now has an internal conversation with himself: "I have to eat this vegetable because I'm am being forced to by Mom and Dad." If this reason becomes the primary reason (ie. the primary motivation in the child's internal…

Show, don't tell (person)

2009-12-28T10:20:20Z

When I was younger a friend of mine and I used to have deep philosophical conversations for hours on end. We'd share our views and debate the differences we saw in each others argument. We rarely came to an agreement and rarely were able to alter the others perception but it was always a great conversation.

Others would sometimes join in our debates but this usually resulted in the conversation turning sour and someone storming out in a rage. This would make us laugh at the hilarity in someone who didn't understand how to truly debate and instead viewed it as a competition or actual fight. I call this the preaching complex.

People with the preaching complex don't always have the ability to understand that everyone is unique and just because someone has a difference of opinion doesn't mean that it should become your personal crusade to make them alter their way of thinking…

noise rock (idea)

2009-12-28T09:04:21Z

Noise Rock is the perfect blend of energy and chaos. While most musicians focus on melody and all that technical bullshit, noise rockers focus on the way sound affects themselves and the audience. Don't ask a noise rocker, "Hey, do you play a minor pentatonic or a major?" because he/she doesn't give a fuck.

I'm not going to go into too much detail. You need to witness noise rock to understand it, because it's just energy, that's all it is.

Pure energy.

Paranormal Activity (review)

2009-12-28T08:55:44Z

This is an attempt to review the film Paranormal Activity in sotto voce (or rather, ambiguous narration) so as not to spoil the plot for those who haven't seen it yet.

Minor spoilers ahead

I just saw the film "Paranormal Activity". It was very good, expertly made and extremely creepy. I won't lose any sleep over it, though. The strange thing with me is that CGI crap that Hollywood puts out like "The Grudge" scares the hell out of me and haunts me for months with its cartoony Photoshopped phantoms. Yet the realistic HORROR (yes, that's how creepy it is; capslock creepy...) in this and in "The Blair Witch Project" doesn't phase me.

I did, however, enjoy the presentation; the premise shows little to tremble at because the paranormal activity doesn't really kick in until the…

December 29, 2009 (event)

2009-12-28T03:49:58Z

Wow. So. Yeah. My first novel is out in stores today.

It's a fantasy entitled Spellbent, and if you fancy a peek at the cover, it's on my homenode. It's published by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, and at present is available in mass market paperback and as an ebook. The plan as I understand it is that if the book does well enough sales-wise, they'll release it in hardcover sometime down the road. This is what Del Rey did with Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, which has done pretty darned well.

This is a milestone for me personally -- I've wanted to be a novelist pretty much since I first learned to read. Writing and publishing has been a lot more complicated than I ever would have guessed as a seven-year-old reading A Wrinkle In Time, and every day I'm learning something new because there's always something new to be learned.

On a related note, in two weeks I'll start working as a mentor in…

Editor Log: December 2009 (log)

2009-12-28T02:05:53Z

Not a whole lot to announce this month and very little in the rambling department. Go ahead, cheer.

Staff changes

After last month's retirements I have no immediate plans to fill those vacancies on the editorial staff. Instead, this month we're joined by three people on missions from High Up (and that does not mean me). Swap is back to work on some modifications to the voting system commissioned by Nate. Users bjornrud and talk-to-me are working for Cliff and should not be considered regular staff so please do not take editorial issues to them.

Code progress

As I said not 20 seconds ago, people are working on voting stuff that may include radical innovations. We will explore the practical side of some ideas that have been floating around for years and which have potential that needs to be tested in the field.

Some projects have been pushed back a bit while some of the more active coders work on Nate's project.…

December 27, 2009 (personal)

2009-12-27T22:42:29Z

I just got back from work today, a retail outlet of a provincial liquor control commission. For Americans not in the loop, the governments of each province in Canada (save two) control *all* alcohol sales; you can only buy from government stores, the government sets the minimum price for all alcohol to prevent abuse (cough), and all profits go directly to government coffers, which strikes me as a facile income-generating plan; but it's the government, what are you going to do about it? This results in a blatant, and in fact government-decreed alcohol monopoly; it also means that most towns of 5000 or less, like the one in which I live, have only one government retail outlet, since competing with yourself is pointless in a pure monopoly.

The lack of free-market alternatives, combined with statutory holidays, leads to some unique issues; Christmas Day and Boxing Day are both government statutory holidays,…

Obama: 2009 In Review (idea)

2009-12-27T22:02:14Z

Has Obama Kept His Promises? A Year In Review

We are coming up to the end of a year that has certainly not been one of the easiest on any part of the world, with the banking crisis taking centre stage in the Western world, while Coalition troops are still in Afghanistan and Iraq. How has Obama fared under a rough first year? John Price examines Obama's campaign promises and compares them to the Kenyan-American president's performance so far.

Economy

The most important factor in most people's minds should be the economy, and how Obama has guided the US through the storm. Unfortunately the Bush administration has not left Obama with an easy starting hand; he must contend with a $1.3 trillion deficit in the national budget, the highest in American history. Taking the old adage "spend money to make money" to heart, he signed a $787 billion economic stimulus bill into legislation less than a month after being sworn…

Santa is a pinko commie (poetry)

2009-12-27T20:50:08Z

So there little Timmy was sitting, on Christmas Eve,
Looking out of his window, he started to grieve,
For his seasonal hero, he came to believe,
Came with a sack full of presents, that children receive.

"Why is he sad?" You might ask in confusion,
Allow me to strip the devil of his illusion,
For the crimson menace, with his every intrusion,
Masks his true colours with joyous delusion.

For red is an apt colour for this master of lies,
This gift-carrying subversive, this master of spies,
How else does he tell when we're naughty or nice,
When he soars through the air, when he troubles the skies?

Santa is a commie! A political traitor!
He may seem benevolent, but the truth is much greater
And more terrible than a Fascist dictator!
He'll corrupt us all, much sooner than later.

He works his elves to the bone, for no recompense,
And gives the…

Jonathan Creek (review)

2009-12-27T12:09:25Z

Jonathan Creek is a magician's apprentice. No, wait, he's the person who devises all the tricks for magician Adam Klaus' performances. His genius and knack for solving puzzles catches the eye - albeit inadvertently - of crime writer Madeline "Maddy" Magellan, who is investigating the murder of an artist. After he successfully solves the case, Maddy ropes him in to more and more bizarre criminal acts, each as impossible as the next. Maddy is eventually replaced by Carla Borrego, a former theatrical agent, who accompanies Jonathan on his crime-solving capers.

This isn't a crime drama. It's a brain-teaser/comedy show that is disguised as a crime drama. Moreover, it's a crime drama that isn't a "whodunit", but more of a "howdunit". While traditional crime dramas focus on "whodunit", and a handful (such as Cracker) focus on "whydunit", Jonathan Creek is one of the first (if not the first) shows to focus on "howdunit". How does a man lock himself inside a nuclear bunker…

December 27, 2009 (log)

2009-12-27T09:49:44Z

(Happy Decemberween, noderkin: I tossed together a Whitman's Sampler of 20 songs plucked from the albums mentioned below, and you can download it right here. Share & enjoy.)

One of the things my dad sent me for my birthday last week was a double-CD of two Dave Mason LPs: It's Like You Never Left from '74 and his self-titled follow-up album, Dave Mason. These were a couple of my father's top-ten albums from that era, back when his life mirrored mine in a lot of ways. (Like me, my mom & dad left Michigan in their mid-twenties and moved to a laidback Cascadian college town-- Corvallis OR, in their case-- to go back to basics and enjoy a hippie lifestyle. Yes, this is basically where I got the idea.)

It got me thinking about what I'd choose as my top albums of this decade, the 2000s.

Furthermore, if you still haven't heard: I broke up with my girlfriend Jet last Saturday and-- although I'm still…

White M Hairstreak (fiction)

2009-12-27T06:57:28Z

(30th May, 2003)

four days ago,
it was the 26th of May
2003
when you left, daddy
i missed you so much,
i've cried every day
since you've been gone.
i wondered where you went,
i could never find you,
i looked in the laundry closet
and under my bed,
i thought maybe you were playing hide and seek
even though i heard you say goodbye.
i didn't understand why you had to leave,
you said you had to,
i wish you didn't, i miss you all the time.

2004
daddy, where did you go?
why did you have to leave?
something about a war, something about people over there, needing you
i need you. i miss you. i want you.
life isn't the same without you.
so much has happened but you're always on my mind.
i still dream about you,
and in my dreams you're by my side
i wake up and realise you're not here and i hate myself for being alive
if only i could always be with you in my dreams, i'd fall asleep forever.…

Nokia N900 (thing)

2009-12-27T06:36:01Z

Time to dust off the 'ol E2 login, and write up something.

What is this thing?

Announced in late August 2009, the Nokia N900 is Nokia's fourth installment of their Linux based internet tablet series. Having never used a prior iteration, I suggest reading prior nodes on the subject. This time around, Nokia has responded to the explosive growth in the smartphone market by releasing a device that competes quite nicely. In terms of CPU power, the N900 comes equipped with the Texas Instruments OMAP3430, an ARM-based SoC at 600MHz. The OMAP3430 can also be found in the Motorola Sholes, and is similar to the Samsung chip in the iPhone 3Gs and the Qualcomm Snapdragon. As a result, the N900 is no slouch.

Along with a fairly high-end CPU the N900 comes equipped with 256MB of RAM, 256MB of OneNAND flash memory for the OS, and a built in 32GB…

Open Your Eyes (person)

2009-12-27T03:52:22Z

* His eyes are steely blue with hints of navy and they tell you everything. The windows to his soul are flung wide open and the black velvet curtains that he calls lashes do nothing to obscure the inconvenient truth that lies behind. They crinkle when he laughs and they dance when he smiles, and his eyes are what I love most about him because when they look at me they soften, making everything inside me melt. This boy is innocent, this boy is naïve, this boy loves who he is and loves me and loves to live his life in the moment and doesn't care what people will find when they look into his clear, blue eyes.

* I upset him, with my eyes and my heart and my soul locked away in some deep, dark place that no one can find, though many have tried. My eyes are brown, almost black like my heart, and they hide what I feel and think in the shadows they throw. And when this boy tries to look into my eyes he gets frustrated, and that tiny little crinkle burrows…

Jun, Kneller, like Morozova, need outside perspective (fiction)

2009-12-26T20:11:30Z

DEAR LEADER | A bionic cyborg disco erupts, fantastically granting heuristic interdependence | Jun, Kneller, like Morozova, need outside perspective

"Jesus Howard Phillips Christ!"

The room falls silent, abashed eyes focused on the table, at holographic maps of Earth, currently sprinkled with angry little red spots, like the planet has hives or something. The General, sclerotic, ancient, chomping on a fat unlit Dominicuban, glares around the others on the Situation Council like he wants to kill all of them. So it seems to Morozova, anyway.

She looks up. "The level of chaos in the major metropolitan areas is on par with the Yellowstone Caldera slash Nanotech Gray Goo slash Technological Singularity slash End of Oil Availability slash Minor Nuclear War slash Global-Warming-Induced Jetstream Shift slash Particle-Collider-Induced…

Prayer for Good Seeing (poetry)

2009-12-26T18:01:37Z

May our legs be strong to climb the highest mountaintops,

May our eyes be clear to see through the clouds from dusk till dawn,

May our stomachs be smaller than our eyes, so that the drinks and snacks may last through the night,

and may our mutual appreciation for good seeing keep us grounded in what is common between the watchers.

Green Chartreuse (thing)

2009-12-26T17:45:03Z

Green Chartreuse is the kind of product that is half-steeped in legend, half in reality, due to its mysterious background and production by a secretive monastic order. Products made by ancient monastic orders, like Stella Artois and St. Bernards, have long since been corrupted by a wide consumer market and therefore bear little or no resemblance to the original product, despite the various centuries the bottle claims to have been in existence for.

Not so for Green Chartreuse, the only liquor (so far that I know) that is naturally green, and is the easiest sipping 55% alcohol content drink you are sure to find. Absinthe, unfortunately, became the boire du jour among the French literati in the 19th century, and so their excesses conferred upon the drink a bawdy and unwholesome reputation, leading to its prohibition in the United States of America which lasts to this day.

Green Chartreuse, however, is a liquor which…

xerophilia (thing)

2009-12-26T08:43:56Z

Q: What gets wet as it dries?
A: A woman with xerophilia!

Theoretically speaking, xerophilia would be an abnormal (probably erotic) interest in dryness and desiccation. Practically speaking, xerophilia would be the only fetish for which I've been unable to find anything. However, considering that real and total dryness is fairly impossible with living humans beings, and that dryness is a very hard thing to convey visually, it doesn't seem too strange that "dry freaks" aren't very prominent. Or maybe they are, and I haven't seen them yet. At the time of writing, danbooru has only three images tagged as "dry", none of which seem very xerophilic. Perhaps this will change when we get holodecks and a tactile Internet, but as for now (2010) xerophilia does not seem very viable.

Now if we can get our minds out of the gutter, we can also say that xerophilic plants exhibit a great affinity for dry climates…

upgrade (idea)

2009-12-26T07:53:08Z

I wondered if she could sense me here. I watched over her shoulder as she washed and dried the dishes, hoping for a sense of recognition, or perhaps a flaw. She looked like me, moved like me. I felt myself reach for a plate, just before she did, perhaps I was faster, perhaps she placed the plates more carefully.

I remembered the previous upgrade, they had warned me there might be some ghosting, a sense of duality as the new ai took hold and the old habits were overwritten. I tried to feel for that ghosting now, a sense of earlier versions or choices. Some sketchiness about my thinking which might link me to an earlier self. Perhaps they still cling to the hardware. I imagined her walking with all of the prior art stepping out amongst her, each with a different stride.

I turned to watch the chef and cold larder team move smoothly…

Why does that tree? (poetry)

2009-12-26T07:49:05Z

Why does that tree
make those creepy shadow puppets
when I'm trying to sleep
(those gangling tree branches
always making funny shapes,
like the outline of a Gothic cathedral
or a spider)?

Why does that tree (tap)
knock on my window when it's stormy out? (tap, tap)
He knows I'll never let him in the house. (tap, tap, tap)
Tomorrow, I think
I'll grab my trusty axe,
sharpen the blade,
and cut him down to size.

The Wytheville Post Office Incident (event)

2009-12-26T02:16:39Z

On December 23rd, 2009, Warren "Gator" Taylor, walked into a post office in Wytheville, Virginia, a town in the rural Appalachian region of Virginia, fired some shots with a pistol, and announced that he was taking hostages of two customers and one postal employee. He also claimed to have some explosives. There followed a nine hour stand-off between Warren Taylor and several police agencies, both local and federal. Taylor, who was in bad health and chose the Wytheville Post Office seemingly on a whim, gave up to authorities, and is currently undergoing psychiatric evaluation.

Taylor had a criminal record prior to this incident, and seemed to be predisposed to violent and irrational behavior, although his most major crime, the intentionally non-fatal shooting of his ex-wife, seemed to suggest that he didn't really have the desire to do anything quite as violent as indiscriminately kill three strangers. His stated motive for the crime was anger at the…

NORAD Tracks Santa! (idea)

2009-12-25T23:17:06Z

Somewhat topically, I'm going to share with you a copy of a hastily typed holiday missive that I sent out to relatives, friends, associates, and strangers alike. It was all part of a nefarious, and I presume unsuccessful (if the presents under all of our Christmas trees were any indication), plot to assassinate Santa. Perhaps we could devise a more collaborative and coherent plot next year, using this failed but earnest attempt as a powerful inspiration:

thanks to the ever vigilant efforts of NORAD, we are one step closer to stopping the santa menace. living in an perilous era where terrorists would take our aircraft and fly these vessels into the world trade center and other national commercial icons, we must, as americans, protect our airspace from foreign intruders.…

NORAD Tracks Santa! (idea)

2009-12-25T22:21:18Z

Every Christmas Eve, my kids would wander around the house looking like they just slammed a case of Jolt Cola. Trying to get them to bed was an exercise in futility, until I came across a local TV News meteorologist using NORADs tracking feed on his weather map. It was the best tool to get the little greedy rugrats to go to bed so Mom and Dad could wrap, assemble, curse at poorly-writen instructions, and curse at forgetting D-sized batteries.

"Look, Kiddies, Santa is on his way here. He won't stop by if you're not asleep!"

Whoever wrote the Omaha article with the wrong phone number, I thank you. This line works better than a mallet to the mullet.

One interesting thing about this year's NORAD feed is they dropped support of Linux/Unix. They used to stream a file with Santa's info, but now you have to have a Windows/Mac computer to track him online. Slashdot has an article with the dubious title of "Santa Hates Linux".