"Brain and brain! What is brain?"

Today while listening to Marty Kaplan's show on Air America Radio, I heard that some theater troop is putting on a stage version of my absolute, 100%, all-fscking-time favorite episode of Star Trek, "Spock's Brain". God damn, this was one excellent episode. For readers out there not familiar with episode 61 of The Original Series, some women alien comes on the ship and replaces Spock's brain with a Twinkie or some shit. What a great plot idea.

The scam is this—these alien women called Eymorgs ganked Spock's best organ to run their underground city, dubbing it "The Controller". On their quest to retrieve the controller, the crew of the 'Prize rig up a remote control for their science officer's lifeless body. They end up with a pimped out RC vulcan and they get to hear Spock's disembodied voice spout trippy little quotables while searching for his brain in the Eymorgs' underground city. "I seem to have a body which stretches into infinity..." Does it get any better than being captured by the givers of pain and delight who use Spock's brain as their master computer? I think not.

Hailed as the best and worse of Star Trek, this episode is now being done in the theater. I couldn't have asked for anything more.

Samsung N400 Linux compatibility report

Another big thanks goes out to Wijay Kesuma for a on the Samsung N400. This Vision compatible phone works great with Linux with the same cable that the A460 uses. Thanks, Wijay!

Google to open parts of their source?

Google may be looking to give back to the world by opening parts of their source. Net4nowt.com is reporting that the internal Google project to do this was mentioned in a presentation to software engineering students in Melbourne, Australia. This could be anything from massively parallel, high-availability, fault-tolerant server software, to the code that powers their various web APIs, to anything else that is behind their kick-ass search engine.

Before anyone gets all excited, I haven't been able to find much independent verification of this. I believe the presentation may have been a seminar on June 18th at the department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Melbourne. However, the seminar description doesn't mention anything on this topic. Anyone know of anything to back this up?

Via LXer.

No more Super Size?

A cultural era has truly come to an end.

McDonalds has dropped the Super Size meal portions from its US menu.

Source

You might be surprised to hear that McDonalds has done away with it's Super Size menu. Or maybe not if you eat there a lot. It might be a part of McDonalds corporate strategy against critics who claim that the obesity problem can be blamed on fast-food companies. I've seen commercials for new salad lines with some sort of free fitness-oriented gift and now they are axing the Super Size menu. Personally, I can't place blame on any business for what is ultimately a personal choice, but I suppose the corporate execs have to deal with their image problem, fair or not.

McDonalds worked hard to introduce the phrase Super Size into the cultural lexicon and now they are dropping it. Times are changing fast. I'm told by my girlfriend, however, that they still Large Size, and it might as well be as big as Super Size. So maybe it isn't changing as fast as I might think.

Donate a book

I saw this notice over at blunted's site early last week when I was in San Diego, about a book donation drive for Costa Rican children. So when I was there, I picked up a book to donate at the local bookstore and I was able to get it in the mail yesterday.

The goal for the end of July is 1000 books, so if you can, send one along—any book suitable for a K-6 student would be appreciated. The address is below.

Ray Smith
Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc.
Attention: Project Apollonia
17311 NW 47th Ave.
Miami Gardens, FL 33055

If you run a website, make sure to include a link to the site run by David Anderson at Group Utopia.

More on the murder of Patrick Anderson

More info on the murder of Patrick Anderson. Contrary to what I thought, the funeral was not last weekend, but yesterday. I understand it was a very large funeral, and while I don't know the exact number of those who came to show their respects, I heard offhandedly that it was "over 1000 people." Patrick was someone who took care of people in the community and was well liked. Two men have already been charged for the vicious murder—a cowardly shot through the back, puncturing both of Pat's lungs.

When dogs go bad

Aaaahhhhh!

Via jwz.

Shhh, don't tell the conservative pundits...

Anyone interested in fact over fiction in the debate on Reagan's tax legacy should check out today's excellent Daily Howler article. If you aren't already aware, Reagan's tax record isn't as simple and straightforward as conservatives would have you believe. Of course, we all know that president's don't raise or lower taxes all by themselves—only Congress can do that—but Reagan sure wasn't afraid to sign bills to raise taxes substantially, twice I might add. Somerby points out that Reagan's first tax cut, adjusted for inflation, was bigger than Clinton's biggest tax cut "in the history of civilization".

Don't let conservatives stifle real discourse by telling you that examining these facts are a disrespect to a dead man. We don't need to pretend to be politically correct in place of truly understanding the foundational legacy that has become unquestionable dogma in today's politics.

Once again, the record isn't as simple as simple-minded pundits would have you believe.

Blogging for bucks in San Diego

Holy shit! Blogging pays off in San Diego, in a very real, green, foldable way. Congrats to Brian for his upcoming publication in the San Diego Reader, which seems to be a popular rag around these parts. And fucking right, the whole deal landed him a solid 2G.

Now, I don't want to let my jealousy of Brian swimming in the scrilla get to me by pointing out that he just got a fat check for doing what other bloggers do out of a need akin to a crack habit. Cause Brian deserves the handsome payment. No less than myself, of course. Really. I'm blogging, I'm in San Diego (temporarily), and I too could use a couple thousand bucks—to pay off the student loans of course, not to take a 3 day, binge drinking tour of Tijuana with all of the dancing girls I could afford. You hear me, San Diego Reader? Your money would be well spent on my services.

Of course, if the Reader doesn't call me, it's because they know I value my integrity and would never sell out for something as meaningless as crisp, new dollar bills. Only someone without a shred of independence or sincerity would sell his soul like that. Blogging is so much more important, and the Reader knows I keep it too real for them to pimp me out.

Oh please, god, pimp me out! I'll work twice as hard for half of what you paid Brian. ;)

Anyway, everyone send a word of congrats over to Brian. At the very least you'll get in a trackback that might just help you greedy bitches get noticed.

The weirdest thing about San Diego

I'm getting into what is hopefully the last week of my more than a month and a half business trip to San Diego. My weekend has been undemanding, giving me time to read and relax. It got me to thinking about one of the weirdest things I've noticed about San Diego.

Cats here are crazy about the little dividers between groceries in the checkout isle. You know the ones I'm talking about—the long, thin plastic bars that divide your groceries from the next person's on the checkout conveyor belt. Everyone here, without exception, has insisted on using these dividers. Generally, where I live, people are relatively confident that the cashiers can figure it out and only resort to using the dividers when the grocery lines are long and cramped. But not here. You can be one of the only two customers in line with a small handful of groceries and the person behind you and in front of you will both still insist on setting one of these plastic dividers down. It's god damn creepy.

I really don't think the cashiers are exceptionally stupid here, so I chalk it up to how cramped San Diegans are. People here are so used to being smashed up against the person that it makes them paranoid about having to ask the cashier remove an item from their ticket that belonged to the person behind them. Weird.

Anyway... The best part about San Diego? Are you worthy?

What is NAS?

If you are interested in such things, head over to the Funkyware blog and read a rant about conflicting audio server standards in Linux. Martin-Éric Racine proposes we all adapt NAS, which he describes as the "one sound server standard..., which has been supported by HP, NCD and every other commercial X device manufacturer for ages". Typically NAS support is rolled up into the Xserver itself. Until today, however, I didn't know NAS existed, usually choosing between Esound or aRTS on a Linux box.

I've had a hard time googling up an authoritative site covering NAS, however, to find out more about it. Anyone care to offer a link covering the standard? I've been using Linux (and even admin'ing commercial Unix boxen, although never with sound support) for quite some time and I've never heard of this standard. Maybe the problem is exposure?

Ripples of Reagan

A day after former President Reagan's death, news of his departure and the subsequent reactions from those who knew him, those who worked with him, those who lived through his two terms, and those who build him up to mythic proportions dominate the airwaves. It's the only thing I can find on the news today. Regardless of what you thought of Reagan, you can't deny the reaction his death has evoked.

On my own bloglist alone the reaction has ranged the gamut. For some, he is a hero who defeated evil and rebuilt the Republican party, while for others, he is an all-but contemptible man with "blood on his hands" in a very personal way. For yet others, Reagan's death seems to be a touchy subject—if you can't find something good to day, your work might be boycotted. Some take this opportunity to obliquely criticize George W. Bush, who many in the media are lovingly comparing to Reagan, while others like the Highest Himself are simply happy to have a break from having Bush under the microscope.

However, most, like myself, are left without much emotion, save perhaps a bit of sympathy. I was pretty young during Reagan's two terms and much of what I remember is a kaleidescope of cultural images.

However you feel about ol' Ronnie, his death has caused great waves around the blogosphere and mainstream media.

Artists subpoenaed under PATRIOT act

Lots of posts today, as I'm sitting around here in San Diego... This one from the American Street caught my eye.

WASHINGTON - June 3 - Three artists have been served subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury that will consider bioterrorism charges against a university professor whose art involves the use of simple biology equipment.

Source

This is a good example of the misuse of the PATRIOT act and how it isn't helping us be more secure, just less free. (Via the American Street.)

Ray Bradbury a hypocritical ass-hat?

WorldNetDaily reports that Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451 is pissed off about Michael Moore's newest movie title, Fahrenheit 9/11. The WorldNetDaily's translation of the Swedish article from Dagens Nyheter reports Bradbury calling Moore a "a screwed asshole" and "a horrible human being — horrible human!" Of course, I don't yet know if this is a fair translation or if the source article is authentic.

If this article is true, considering that Bradbury has similarly borrowed titles from authors such as Walt Whitman and William Shakespeare, I guess that makes him a hypocritical ass-hat.

Via BoingBoing.

Reagan dies today at 93

Former president Ronald Reagan died today, at a ripe old age of 93. As everyone knows, Reagan battled Alzheimer's disease for years. Scary stuff to suffer through, especially to me, with a history of Alzheimer's in my family. Reagan was a dreamer, a purveyor of dubious theories, an articulate and moving speaker, a B movie actor, and a controversial president (also known as the Teflon President). As a "hero" of the conservative movement, his presidency has left us with a plethora of interesting phrases, like Reaganomics, "Just Say No!", "Star Wars", Iran-Contra, Reagan-Democrats, "ketchup really is a vegetable", "Winners Don't Use Drugs", "trees cause more pollution than automobiles do", and voodoo-economics.

Fahrenheit 9/11 trailer mirror

Waxy.org is hosting a mirror of the Fahrenheit 9/11 trailer. Get it while it's hot, but free software users be forewarned, it is a Windows Media file, so make sure to use mplayer or another capable app.

Gnome 2.6 hard to install? Not with Gentoo...

Over at Linux Planet, Kurt Wall complains that he had an insanely difficult time installing Gnome 2.6. Want some simple instructions? If you run Gentoo, it couldn't be simpler—just run emerge -v gnome. Then emerge the applications that you want. Installing Gnome was by far the easiest thing I did when installing Gentoo, and that included compiling every bit of it from source. (It will take several hours, so go get yourself something to numb your brain while you wait.)

Study on prayer and IVF probably a fraud

Another quick news item from Les today... Prayer will not help you conceive in-vitro. The study that claimed to prove so turns out to probably be a complete fraud. Let's hope this gets some media attention.

Palm-sized or not, double-click patent will hurt everyone

Better be careful, software writers, what you allow to be done with a mouse. Les reports that Micro$oft has just patented the double-click. Les does point out that the patent seems to focus on palm-sized devices, but I believe that will provide little to no protection against misuse of this (IMHO) illegal patent. With computing devices becoming smaller and smaller every day, more and more technology will come under the focus of this patent. Once again a company steps outside of the free market to use the government in an effort to extort money out of honest businesses. Repeat after me, kids, "the patent office is hideously broken and needs to be reformed."

Murder in the family

I just heard that my girlfriend's cousin, Patrick Anderson, was murdered just the other day. It doesn't seem to have made the papers yet and I'm not sure it will, being a small town homicide, but it's chilling nonetheless. I've not heard the circumstances surrounding the murder or any other details yet. Stop the fucking violence, people.

Update: Thu Jun 3 10:02:26 CDT 2004

A few news organizations are now giving brief reports of the murder. WDAM is carrying a story with Pat's name describing the killing. The Hattiesburg American is also carrying a story dated yesterday that does not include Patrick's name.

Patrick is survived by his young wife and two children, as well as by his father. The funeral will probably be this weekend.

Deep Concentration cellphone ringtone

Hand-made Gang Starr cellphone QCP ring-tone: Deep Concentration. Any cell phone that can handle QCP ringtones should be able to use this file. Sprint users can use Focus to send this file to their phone. Enjoy.

Samsung A460 works with Sprint 2G data access with Linux

Wijaya Kesuma emailed me with a link to his excellent writeup on setting up data access in GNU/Linux with a Samsung A460. This phone uses Sprints older, 2G data service, with slower data rates. I've added this writeup to my list of Sprint phones known to work with Sprint data access with Linux.