Goose the Blog 2.0

Recently, I started using Firefox, Mozilla's stripped down and souped up browser. I've been a Mozilla browser user for a long time, but I felt that Opera was just a step ahead. However, having three or four different browsers on my computer seemed like a waste, so when I got my new laptop at work, I just used Netscape 7.1 (which is basically Mozilla with a Netscape brand) and IE 6.0 (when I had to, because some stupid work apps like our expense reporting wouldn't work with anything else), both of which were pre-installed by our IT guys.

But like I said, I recently started using Firefox instead of Netscape. Succinctly, it rocks! It's like a combination of the best parts of Mozilla and Opera. The best thing about it, though, might be the excellent Firefox logo, shown above. I like just having it on my desktop! Of course, Firefox also has all the things you expect a modern browser to have, like:

• Popup blocking
  
• Tabbed browsing
  
• Smart search
  
• Customizable privacy and security (with secure defaults)
  
• Customizable toolbars and themes
  
• Imports settings from other browsers
  
• Small download (4.7Mb)
  

Why keep using a busted antique (cough cough, IE) if you don't have too?

Update: I was being patriotic and I didn't even know it!

U.S. Steers Consumers Away From IE
"The Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team touched off a storm this week when it recommended for security reasons using browsers other than Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer."

No thanks necessary, ma'am. I'm just doing my part to defend the nation against terror.

This morning in a private, unannounced ceremony, Diva quietly handed over the title of blog Mascot to Goose. During the ceremony, Diva and Goose made no public comments. Goose will be interim Mascot until a permanent Mascot can be selected. Preliminary plans call for an official Mascot election in early 2005.

Diva's resignation comes as a surprise to most. Although she has publicly acknowledged having a tennis ball abuse problem in the past, it was commonly accepted that she had put those troubles behind her. There is speculation in the press this morning that the stress of being blog Mascot had caused her to loose control of her ball addiction, and reports are now circulating that Diva was recently spotted obsessively playing fetch, barking incessantly at the people near her to "throw the freaking ball already!"

Another mystery is why Goose was selected as her interim replacement only a few weeks after being terminated from the same position. It has been suggested by experts on blog mascotry that the shadowy interests formerly backing Diva felt they no longer had control over her actions, and in an effort to repair the PR damage caused by Diva's recent behavior, discreetly approached Goose as her replacement. Despite his recent dismissal, Goose still enjoys tremendous grassroots support and high approval ratings, and promises to be as popular with the public as ever. On the dark side of the rumor mill is the whisper that Goose has a chemical dependency, due perhaps to past illness or injury, and that through this dependency his new backers will seek to control him as they could not control Diva.

On a personal note, I have mixed feelings about the transfer of mascotry. While Goose promises to be an effective Mascot, I am concerned with the evident amount of backroom dealing that is taking place. I feel certain that we, the public, are capable of handling these occasional mascot crises in a mature and responsible manner, and we do not need to be protected from the burden of decision-making. Nonetheless, I wish Goose good luck and success as interim Mascot.

...you know who to call. From their tower they can see it all. When there's evil on the attack you can rest knowing they've got your back. Because when the world needs heroes on patrol, the Teen Titans go.

With their super powers they unite. They've never met a villian that they liked. They've got the bad guys on the run, and they won't stop until the job gets done. Because when the world is losing all control, the Teen Titans go.

If your heart is black you better watch out. You cannot escape the team. When they catch you there won't be any doubt that you've been beaten by the teens.

Teen Titans!

I love my husband. I love him for many reasons, not the least of which is that he knows how to fold a fitted sheet. I've tried to learn - I've spent much time studying photos like these but can only get up to step 2 before giving up, wadding up the sheet into a ball, and stuffing it under the bed.

However, I think I may have redeemed myself. I've learned how to fold tee-shirts using an ultra-efficient Japanese method and now, you can too.

I know, I know. Talking about Reagan is sooo two-weeks ago. But the flags are still at half-mast (yours is too, right?), so I figure a few more words wouldn't bother anyone. Besides, this entry isn't really about Ronald Reagan anyway.

"The Amazing" James Randi has posted an interesting essay by the late author Isaac Asimov called "The Reagan Doctrine". It was originally published in 1981.

Some time ago, Ronald Reagan pointed out that one couldn't trust the Soviet government because the Soviets didn't believe in God or in an afterlife and therefore had no reason to behave honorably, but would be willing to lie and cheat and do all sorts of wicked things to aid their cause. Naturally, I firmly believe that the president of the United States knows what he is talking about, so I've done my very best to puzzle out the meaning of that statement.

Let me begin by presenting this "Reagan Doctrine" (using the term with all possible respect): "No one who disbelieves in God and in an afterlife can possibly be trusted." If this is true (and it must be if the president says so), then people are just naturally dishonest and crooked and downright rotten. In order to keep them from lying and cheating every time they open their mouths, they must be bribed or scared out of doing so. They have to be told and made to believe that if they tell the truth and do the right thing and behave themselves, they will go to heaven and get to plunk a harp and wear the latest design in halos. They must also be told and made to believe that if they lie and steal and run around with the opposite sex, they are going to hell and will roast over a brimstone fire forever.

It's a little depressing, if you come to think of it. By the Reagan Doctrine, there is no such thing as a person who keeps his word just because he has a sense of honor. No one tells the truth just because he thinks that it is the decent thing to do. No one is kind because he feels sympathy for others, or treats others decently because he likes the kind of world in which decency exists.

Instead, according to the Reagan Doctrine, anytime we meet someone who pays his debts, or hands in a wallet he found in the street, or stops to help a blind man cross the road, or tells a casual truth — he's just buying himself a ticket to heaven, or else canceling out a demerit that might send him to hell. It's all a matter of good, solid business practice; a matter of turning a spiritual profit and of responding prudently to spiritual blackmail.

Isaac Asimov died in 1992 of complications from AIDS, which he contracted from a transfusion of HIV infected blood during heart bypass surgery in 1983. HIV was not described by researchers until 1983, and a test for the virus was not available until 1985. Asimov's AIDS went unrecognized for many years. (Some might count this as an additional, not unrelated, indictment of Ronald Reagan.)

Keen-eyed readers might have noticed that I've included a new section in the menu at right called blogrolls. A blogroll is a just list of blogs that one likes. My blogroll links to a web based service (free!) called Bloglines that permits me to view my blogs from any computer. It also keeps track of new blog entries, so I don't have to check each blog individually to see what's up. If you read several blogs regularly, you might try it.

To my original point: if there are other blogs you'd like to put here, let me know and I'll link them. If you have a blogroll of your own, I can link that too.

From CNN.com:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Acrylamides, a family of chemicals recently found in cooked foods that is known to cause cancer in rats, pose little threat to the U.S. population, an expert panel has reported.

People do not eat enough of the chemicals in their daily diet to risk the genetic damage that can lead to cancer, the committee of experts in reproductive toxicology, birth defects and others areas reported.

I plan to test their assumption that people do not eat enough fried food to be harmed by acrylamides. Bring on the french fries, chicken tenders, and cheesesteaks, and open the Doritos®! I will digest them all in the name of Science!

Thanks to our Republican friends on the Supreme Court of the United States, you are now required to present identification when asked by an officer of the law. It seems this practice doesn't violate Amendment IV, after all, despite that part about the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." It all depends on what is unreasonable, right? In this age of terror, perhaps, less and less becomes unreasonable.

Maybe next we will be required to quarter troops in our homes, "in a manner to be prescribed by law." That would help keep down defense and homeland security spending, and it should also keep those pesky liberals (and libertarians!) from mouthing off.

SpaceShipOne officially made it to space, 100 kilometers up. That's about ten times higher than commercial aircraft fly, and three times higher than military fighter jets. Pilot Mike Melvill has earned his astronaut wings. For some reason, I find this absolutely astounding, and an amazing accomplishment (Wow! that's a lot of "A"s). I think this feeling might be because the world has been in a bit of a downward spiral for the last few years. This event doesn't change any of that, but it makes me proud to be a homo sapiens sapiens again.

Unfortunately, I couldn't watch or hear a live feed. As far as I could tell, they were either swamped or blocked by the firewall. I'll look for some video - if I find any, I'll link it here.

Congratulations to Mike Melvill, Scaled Composites and the SpaceShipOne team, and human beings everywhere.

Update: Burt Rutan started the project in 1995, and spent $20 million to get here today. Paul Allen, formerly of Microsoft, helped finance the project. Remember when Mark Shuttleworth and Dennis Tito paid the same amount, each, to visit ISS? It seems they could have built their own rockets, instead of renting space on a Russian Soyuz.

SpaceShipOne: there is live web audio cast Monday morning (6am PDT, so some of you will have to wake up early).

Gmail: the invitation clearinghouse for troops is running (but I still don't have any invitations to share).

I hope this is a joke. Honestly, I can't tell anymore.

Bush plans to screen whole US population for mental illness (from the British Medical Journal)

Let me 'splain. [pause] No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Bush wants to test everyone in the US for mental illness and then have them take expensive new drug treatments manufactured by his friends in the pharmaceutical industry, just like he did when he was governor of Texas.

(See? I'm back to my regular smart-assery now.)

This sounds like a good idea.

Here's the deal. Gmail, Google's 1 Gbyte email account, is currently available by invitation only. When you sign up, you get to send invitations to other folks so they can sign up too. The plan is to send these invitations to servicemen-and-women who are stationed in Iraq and Afganistan. Apparently, most of these folks only have hotmail or similar, so sending photos/audio/video to or from home is not really practical. Better contact with home means better morale.

Here's where we come in. As Blogger account holders, we already have our invitation to sign up for Gmail. Just log in to Blogger (like you were going to make a post) and you should see it. If you don't, let me know, and I can send you an invitation so you can join, and so on, and so on, just like the shampoo commercial.

WWDN vows to keep us updated. If they set up a Gmail invite clearinghouse, we should be all set to help out a tiny little bit.

Update: 1) Like the picture says, you have to be an "active Blogger user" to see an invitation when you log in to post. This is probably to keep folks from setting up a Blogger account just so they can get a Gmail invite. Those of you who don't post (or comment, maybe?) probably won't see this invitation. Blogwise, this might encourage you all to participate more! 2) I signed up for Gmail, but I don't automatically get invitations to send to other people. Supposedly, they magically appear in your inbox sometimes. For contributors to this blog: if you don't have your own invitation and want one, let me know. When I am given an invitation I will send it to you (first come, first served, and I'm reserving any extras for the GIs if that plan works out).

You know, for the last couple of months I've been trying to keep things pretty light-hearted on this blog. Even when I criticize the current administration, I've tried to do in a joking way. So I thought for a while before posting this, because it isn't funny at all. But some evenings I read the news and, at the risk of being too earnest, I just feel like I have to say something, even if no one is listening and even if I don't expect to change anyone's mind.

I don't need to tell you that our nation is facing a crisis. Anyone who has their eyes open knows that. It's not the worst crisis of our history - it's probably not even in the top ten - but from where I stand it still looks pretty serious. The Bush administration has amassed a terrible record, and they have placed the nation in a very difficult place. This administration has presided over the longest jobless recovery in modern history, created record deficits, made our nation more vulnerable to terrorism, damaged the ability of our armed forces to defend us, ruined our international credibility, threatened our constitutional freedoms in the name of security, abused and expanded the power of the Executive Branch, widened the political and cultural divisions among Americans, substantially increased government spending, put young men and women at unnecessary risk for the foreseeable future, dangerously mismanaged the occupation of a foreign nation, mislead the nation both deliberately and negligently in pursuit of their goals, and demonstrated dubious ethics and morality throughout. And there's more.

These are not the things that most conservative voters believe in, are they?

So, I say this to conservative voters: The Bush administration has given lip service to conservative ideology to get your support, but it has not delivered on conservative values. Voting for Bush-Cheney in November is a vote for ideology. It is a vote for ideology over results, ideology over competence, and ideology over ethics. Your vote is your voice, and a vote for Bush indicates explicit approval of the things his administration has done. The Bush administration is not good for you - it is not good for any of us. Vote for your ideology in 2008 if you want, but this November, vote for a change. At least think about it. Is the alternative to Bush really that frightening?

Of course you already know about this, but SpaceShipOne is getting ready for its first space flight on June 21, ushering in an exciting new era of much-less-insanely-expensive private space travel. I have two questions for potential space travel agents: What destinations are available? How much is a one-way economy class ticket?

Some important links:
SpaceShipOne at Scaled Composites
Boing Boing live bloggage (part one, part two)
The X Prize

you're only number three on the sweatiest U.S. cities list. El Paso, Texas is number one. Go Texas!

I wonder what the sweatiest city in the world is?

The shadowy interests behind our new mascot think it would drum up some extra publicity for Diva if this blog was more controversial. Any publicity is good publicity, or so they tell me. So, let's see... Ahem.

Please choose whichever combination of phrases makes you more outraged:

How about those homosexuals getting married? That sure is (cool / messed up)! It is a (natural extension of / complete departure from) the (modern / traditional) concept of marriage. It is also a good example of (equal protection under the law / anti-democratic judical activism) and will probably result in (greater parity for / backlash against) homosexuals in our society. We should think about the children!

Pro-Diva factions have been lobbying for some personnel changes to "Goose the Blog" for several weeks now. I suppose the change was, ultimately, inevitable, due to the well-heeled and highly influential lobbyists employed by the shadowy interests backing Diva. Nonetheless, here's to fighting the good fight. Blog on, Goose, where ever you may be.

Long live Diva!

We all get migraine headaches. OK, maybe we don't all get them, but it turns out that about 28 million Americans do. Headache researchers have discovered that 90% of "sinus headaches" are really mis-diagnosed migraine headaches. That is, it may not really be a sinus headache unless it is accompanied by a sinus infection (symptoms: yucky colored mucus and fever) - otherwise, pain due to "pressure" behind the eyes is probably a migraine.

For a few years now, I have been able to identify an oncoming migraine headache (extreme pain and nausea) by noticing that my head felt congested (e.g. blocked sinuses and slight pain in the sinus area). What this new research says is that these are just symptoms of a migraine, and so I have been identifying oncoming migraines by noticing that I had a migraine. Pointless! Nonetheless, for me, taking sinus medication (pseudoephedrine or similar) tends to delay or prevent the onset of the really bad part of the migraine by eliminating the feeling of being stuffed up.

Furthermore, over the years I have developed the non-scientific understanding that my post-adolescence migraines are associated with changes in air pressure (specifically, drops in pressure). However, other, more careful, researchers have demonstrated that the onset of migraines is not a useful predictor of weather. To be clear, 51% of migraine sufferers are sensitive to weather changes, it's just that the sufferers aren't aware of which weather factor correlates with their migraine. For the curious, the results show:

Temperature or humidity changes sparked pain in 34 percent of sufferers, while 14 percent were hit when a weather pattern changed and 13 percent when it was a pressure change. About 10 percent had their pain triggered by more than one type of weather change.

At least there is evidence that it isn't all in my head. (Ow! It hurt just to write that joke.)

Salon.com is running an article (you must watch an ad to read it) on the end of two long-running comic book series, "Bone" and "Cerebus". Cerebus is a bad-natured aardvark/barbarian. I remember reading a few Cerebus volumes that belonged to Jeff one Christmas break in the early 90's. Did you finish the entire collection, Jeff (except for the last book - I understand that comes out soon)? The article says it is 300 issues and 6000 pages long.

From the CNN website this morning. For an instant, I thought they were referring to President Bush! My mind is playing tricks on me.

If you are at all like me, you may have found yourself to be out of touch with pop music these days, an unexcited by much of which you hear. But now I live in seattle, home of one of the greatest radio stations of all time. KEXP is where the music matters. I listen to it every morning during my commute and always find some new artist to get excited about. Some of my recent discoveries (I claim these artists in the name of Spain!) have been The Shins, whom offer a refreshingly unpretentious version of power pop and Aqualung, whose song "brighter than sunshine" always puts me in a good mood, even Monday mornings.
Even if you don't like the artists I recommended here I still encourage you to check out KEXP, especially John in the morning (6am to 10am PST), the programing is eclectic and consistently good, without the need to find and play only the most obscure artists that is common with many college stations. Support commercial free radio and check out KEXP!

Just browsing the Sanford Guide to antimicrobial treatment between appointments yesterday and came across some tick bite regiments of interest. A sigle dose of 200mg of Doxyclycline (taken with food) can be used after a tick bite; particularly a nymphal partially engorged deer tick bite, in an endemic area (read, rural Pennsylvania) can be used as post exposure prophylaxis to prevent the develope of Lyme disease. In one study (NEJM 345:79 & 133, 2001.) erythema migrans, a sign of Lyme, occured in 3% of the control group after documented tick bite and 0.4% of Doxycycline group.

This weekend, I did my best to avoid the gauzy tributes and retrospectives, unnecessarily filmed through the vaseline-smeared lens of time, nostalgia, and hero worship. No, of course I'm not talking about D-Day, where there actually were some heroes.

So here's my tribute to "Insane Anglo Warlord", straight from 1985. Thanks for the memories mess.

Oh, you've got no reason and you've got no sense
Your stupid logic just makes me wince
Your face is twisted and your mind is warped
You scare me senseless I just want to get out

Go ahead and dance.

P.S. That's an actual screencap of www.georgewbush.com "The Official Re-election Site for President George W. Bush". Way to exploit the death of your hero for political purposes, you ass.

Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water - Marc Reisner
"Water flows uphill towards money." If you live in the American West, or plan to live there, or once lived there, you should read this book. It will make you think about some of the things you take for granted, like tap water and cities of millions of people in the middle of one of the world's largest deserts. This is a powerful text, if a little long winded. It delivers an extensive history of the (mis)utilization of water resources in the western United States, and in the process skewers hypocritical conservatives, profligate liberals, arrogant engineers, and self-perpetuating government bureaucracies. A happier afterward in the revised edition discusses some of the recent victories of environmentalism and a more realistic notion of what the West should be.

The Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster - Mike Davis
This is an interesting, but not great, book. I read it because my library didn't have a copy of City of Quartz. It is a dissection of Southern Californian fears, from fires, earthquakes, and floods to crime to racial demons. There is a lot of fascinating stuff in here (Los Angeles has more tornadoes than Oklahoma City!), but my favorite chapter concerns the literary and filmic destruction of LA. It is occasionally humorous, but I found the history of the popular depiction of racial wars very disturbing - have some of us come nowhere in the last century? I'll finish by noting that many people say that this book is a work of fiction, not history. Had I known that going in, I might not have read it. True or not, Davis' biases are evident.

The Confusion - Neal Stephenson
Fantastic book! As long as Quicksilver, this book feels shorter. There is less natural philosophy and more swashbuckling (including a complete circumnavigation of the globe). There's a bit about the alchemical properties of King Solomon's gold and some pre-Enlightenment chemical engineering. Additionally, there is a significant amount of banking, as many of the events in the book orbit the disintegration of the traditional feudal land economy of Europe and the rise to dominance of a market economy driven by international trade. We also are clued in to the conceptualization and creation of the first computing machines. Other than that, this novel is all over the place. So far, The Baroque Cycle is a really great story. Give it a chance if you have a lot of time on your hands.

The Polynesians: Prehistory of an Island People - Peter S. Bellwood
After my trip to Hawaii (and a few tantalizing tidbits of information), I wanted to learn more about the origin and travels of the Polynesian people. Sure, I read all about the environmental disasters precipitated by the Polynesians in Guns, Germs, and Steel, but I wanted to learn about the Polynesians themselves this time. This book told me everything I wanted to know. It is a detailed, scientific (read "dry" - there are many figures, but no pretty pictures) review of languages, ethnography, anthropology, and archaeology across all the major islands of Polynesia. The version I read was from 1978, and I wonder if the updated version makes use of DNA tracing technology that has been developed since then. It seems to me that this would be a useful tool in establishing the chronology of Polynesian expansion and origins.

Here a tasty treat for Futurama fans and math geeks everywhere: Futurama πk - Mathematics in the Year 3000. (If you read slashdot, you probably saw it there yesterday.)

P.S. Google got the answer to question number 1 on the second hit. If you don't want to know, don't click here.

It's still early in the Great Comment Experiment, but I'm having doubts about Blogger comments. Sure you can delete your own posts, and sure you can post as much as you want (no more lousy 1000 char limit to get in Jeff's or my way). But Haloscan doesn't require log ins, pops up comments in a new window instead of the "permanent link" page, and has auto-smileys. Pro and cons, pros and cons.

I'm thinking of going back to Haloscan. If I upgrade my account ($10!) I can get a 3000 char post limit, no "archiving" of posts older than 4 months, and the comment count should look correct, even for the oldest posts on the blog. Plus, I can export comments to my HD (and probably send them to you for your permanent archive, Steve).

Any thoughts, or is my concern over this equaled only by everyone else's apathy?

Remember this post (from 2/10/04)? I said:

I know why Tenet still has his job - you can only ask a man to fall on his sword once. Tenet is going to fall on his in October if things still aren't looking good for Bush.

Well, I was wrong. He fell on his sword in June, but at a very politically useful time. Who thought it would look so bad for the Bush admin this early in the summer? (Plame Grand Jury; Chalabi thief, liar, and spy; total failure of Iraq policy; Halliburton email; 9/11 commission; Abu Ghraib; Kerry's position in battle-ground states; biking accident. Did I forget something?) I'm not saying I'm smart or anything, but I'm smarter than Bill O'Reilly. If I was wrong about the timing, it was because I overestimated Bush and his boys.

Well, it isn't quite midnight, but I am going to bed, so I switched over to Blogger comments. It looks like all the posts since Blogger implemented comments got a comment field, but older posts did not. As I said, old Haloscan comments are no longer visible.

Try them out!

Astute visitors may have noticed a new link on the page - StatCounter.com. I decided to try it out to see who was visiting and how often. The answers? You are, and just about everyday. So everyone can play, I've made the stats public. Just click here to get through the guest log in. Don't forget to check out the extra info under the "statistics" heading in the top left column. If you have a problem with displaying this info publicly, comment here or drop me an email, and I will lock it up again.

<sarcasm> Also, I'd like to thank everyone for their effusive praise regarding the new template design </sarcasm>. I like it too, and I think we'll keep it. But I can't take much credit (except for the Goose graphic). We must thank the folks at Blogger for providing such a nice template (and specifically, Douglas Bowman at www.stopdesign.com).

<sarcasm> Also, it is time to end the controversy over switching from Haloscan to Blogger comments. I know there have been many passionate appeals on both sides of the issue, but I think the only way to resolve the crisis is to test out Blogger comments and see if we actually miss Haloscan at all </sarcasm>. We cannot make progress if we cling to the achievements of the past - we must look forward. After a short period for final comments, starting midnight EDT, June 1, 2004 (approximately - is midnight the start of a new day or the end of an old one? I mean the end), Blogger comments will be enabled. (And if we hate it, I can reinstate Haloscan and it will be like the Blogger debacle never happened...)

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