Linkrot Sucks!!! =>
Oy Vey (or is it "oi vey"?), after updating my template to include links to the latest archives, I found a broken link from July to a really cool eulogy for Gene Khan. Now I can't even remember what it was that I found so compelling, and this pisses me off to no end. This is the central problem of the web: A link is only as permanent as it's target. A five year-old web page, in most cases, might as well be a text document, and may be a great deal worse, because when you write a text doc you either have include the ancillary material within the document itself or else you can make a standard reference to another written text that can then be researched independently. A modern physics text can make reference to Newton's Principia, a book written 315 years ago, and the "link", though less conveniently followed, will remain intact for centuries, if not millennia, to come. The web, as fast and convenient as it is, retains linked information about as well as a draft beer holds a frothy head.

What to do? I think I will start, on an experimental basis, saving text important enough to link to on my hard drive, uploading it to my server when the occasion merits and linking to that, with full attribution and a note regarding the substitution. An ugly situation at best, but some info is too important or too interesting to trust to the web (at least the web outside of my domain).
jkb at 10:40 PM

The danger of opening one's mouth and removing all doubt...

Mea Culpa =>
Here's something I wrote in response to a listserv thread that had, at that moment, swerved into a discussion about Hiroshima:

Let me add just a little more cynical calculus to this discussion. Ending the war quickly was probably secondary to the goal of stopping the Soviets from occupying the Northern portion of Japan (they had manage to occupy the Japanese held Kuril islands North of Hokkaido as well as the remainder of Sakhalin in the final days of the war) and letting them know that their further expansion would be opposed in the strongest possible manner. This is why we dropped two bombs, because just one may have been a unique occurrence, whereas two might mean that we have five or ten or a hundred. The number of people killed in these two actions was certainly horrific, but not outstanding by the day's standards, probably not even equal to the fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo combined, or Japan's infamous "Rape of Nanking". Not an excuse, just some perspective.

I then go on to state that it was a good thing in the long run to drop the bomb then, because it illustrated the horrors of nuclear war and thus made it less likely for us to engage in a full-on nuclear exchange later when we and our enemies were much better armed.

Okay fine, except that the first part of my thesis was mere speculation, whereas there is quite a bit of well sourced analysis that points to the less-cynical, much more mundane theory that the bombs were dropped to hasten the end of the war and to save lives, Japanese included.

So I'm batting .500 on this one, which is all you can hope for on some days. My willingness to believe the more cynical theory is based on my sense that there are frequently layers of motivation below people's actions, especially if those people are in positions of power, eg. rich, in government or the military, etc. Bomb Japan to send a message to the Soviets? Sounds good to me. The danger of an all-encompassing world view - a set of algorithms that produce an answer no matter what the question is, be it moral, psychological or historical - is that when things don't quite fit the mold we tend to distort them until they do, with a hammer and a blowtorch if necessary, thus negating the worldview's reality content, turning a useful lense through which to observe the universe into a blindfold.

While every aspect of human existence may have at least some small baring on every other aspect of human existence (which nonetheless may be more influential than originally intuited given the magnification of effect due to chaotic processes), it is not always possible to solve every problem with a single set of algorithms, no matter how clever. At least not yet, and possibly never, especially the farther you stray from the 'hard' sciences based on mathematical models of the universe. A grand unified theory of physics? Maybe. A grand unified theory of religion, sociology, ethics or art? Not likely.

All of which means that my world view, once again, needs a little tweaking, and that I should read more and say less.
jkb at 12:52 AM

What price stability? =>
Of all the arguments against the US invading Iraq unilaterally, one that I find the least compelling is that it threatens the "stability" of the region. Putting aside for a moment the obvious irony that occurs any time one juxtaposes the concepts "stability" and "Middle East", it begs the question, stability of what?

Stability of territorial integrity? As if the current boarders, drawn by European colonial powers for their own purposes amidst the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire after WWI, were somehow sacred inscriptions, never to be violated. Stability of the current Middle Eastern governments? There is not one legitimate representative government in the entire region. All are either military dictatorships, theocracies, single party socialist hegemonies or rule by a hereditary aristocracy (with the exception of that great Satan Israel), holding power solely by force of arms and threat of death, engaging in censorship, torture and political assassination to maintain their unyielding grip. Is it the stability of culture? The ways of the sheep herder and desert nomad are anachronisms of a bygone era, and in any event are clearly untenable with the region's current population and increasing urbanization. The plight of women in Arab speaking nations is shameful and is in fact hurting them culturally and economically, one half of their human capital wasted in state-sanctioned enslavement. Stability of world oil prices? I thought those high-minded environmentalist types were trying to get us to drive our cars less anyway. Regardless, that's not the only patch of ground (or continental shelf) that has some oil under it. We have to start moving to fuel sources that are not dependant on people who wish us ill. The status quo in the Middle East is unacceptable, especially if you're a ethnic or religious minority, a woman, or a person that wishes to discuss matters of conscience openly. Preservation of a stable tyranny is not necessarily preferable to the potential anarchy of national dissolution. Stalin and Mao ruled for decades - did that make their neighbors, or the world, a safer place?

If you want to make a good argument against this little election-year foreign adventure, tell the people that it's just going to cost to damn much and that the debt we'll incur will be a further drag on an already sluggish economy. You want a stable region? What you need is human rights, representative government and free-market economics. The capitalist world is busy trying to glue itself back together with trade agreements and common currencies, without so much as pointing a gun at another western democracy in more than half a century. That's the kind of stability worth preserving.
jkb at 12:16 AM

'Why We Fight America': Al-Qa'ida Spokesman Explains September 11 and Declares Intentions to Kill 4 Million Americans with Weapons of Mass Destruction:

"How can [he] possibly [accept humiliation and inferiority] when he knows that the [divine] rule is that the entire earth must be subject to the religion of Allah - not to the East, not to the West - to no ideology and to no path except for the path of Allah?

"...America is the head of heresy in our modern world, and it leads an infidel democratic regime that is based upon separation of religion and state and on ruling the people by the people via legislating laws that contradict the way of Allah and permit what Allah has prohibited. This compels the other countries to act in accordance with the same laws in the same ways… and punishes any country [that rebels against these laws] by besieging it, and then by boycotting it. By so doing, [America] seeks to impose on the world a religion that is not Allah's…"

I don't know whether to laugh or cry about this one. Yes they (those non peace-loving religious zealots for whom Western materialism is anathema) will continue to strike at us when they can, killing some, damaging property and wounding our pride, and we, having the money and the technology and plenty of vengence-is-mine-thus-sayeth-the-Lord-fanaticism of our own, will continue to level whole countries in an effort to ensure our own security and standard of living. T'was ever thus. So take your best shot, lads, because the coming TV season is looking a little thin, and nothing eases the boredom like a cruise missile eye's view of some mud hut in Fanatistan.
jkb at 10:51 PM

Salon: "Forbidden thoughts about 9/11" A Quote:

"I hated the New York Times profiles of all the deceased. It's just that everyone they wrote about -- all 2,000 people -- were depicted as really nice, really devoted parents who came home every night at 5 p.m. to make dinner, play with the kids, never missed a soccer game, and proposed to their girlfriend in a really sweet, creative way. I would read these profiles every day and think, yeah right. Was everyone in the WTC a super amazing person? Someone who worked there must have been an asshole." -- Female reporter at a major business magazine

Here's mine: I was working for a telecom construction company, getting paid about 30% less than my usual construction wage and less than half of what I was making as a dotcom sysadmin/webmaster just months before, laboring for and with clueless Neanderthal idiots (with a couple of notable exceptions), building a new switch in downtown San Diego for one those faceless acronymed megacorps. I was saying to one of my co-workers that it would be cool if they could just lay me off, so that I could collect unemployment and look for a new position or to bid some jobs and start working as a freelance carpenter again. The next day was 9/11, and I was laid off by the following Friday as the telecom sector, already in a long decline, fell like a stone.

Postscript: I never did collect unemployment. Because I had only worked for the company for about six months, and my previous employment at the dotcom was all 1099, I was eligible for about $70 a week in benefits. Hardly worth the effort. Besides, I started working the next day (Saturday) putting in some pocket doors in someone's bathroom, validating, for me anyway, the benevolent universe principle.
jkb at 7:25 PM

Heard at work on Saturday:

ME (In response to a negative statement about the bible resulting from a discussion of the authorship of The Byrds hit "Turn, Turn, Turn"): "Come now, It's great litterature"
BOSS (Coming in late and just hearing the end of the conversation): "What is?"
ME: "The bible."
BOSS (Curiously): "Are you an atheist?"
ME: (Enthusiastically): "Hell no, that would entail that I believe that there is no God, which is still a belief!"

jkb at 2:18 AM

This post is one of 8 things I'm trying to write about now - having ADD and being very anal at the same time is a recipe for little writing, blogging or otherwise, every seeing the light of day :(

ADD and the Trades =>
For those of you who don't know, I make the majority of my living as a humble carpenter (actually, if you really know me you'll know that I'm anything but humble). I was talking with my boss today (well, yesterday really) about all the vastly over-qualified people we know in the trades, people with degrees in engineering or philosophy or memberships in Mensa. Most have obsessive interests outside of construction, like music, building custom cars or motorcycles, sport-fishing, scuba diving, mountain climbing, motocross racing, and increasingly, computers (my obsessions are computers and music). Most have some problem dealing with authority. And most became trades people by accident, as a way station to somewhere else that became a permanent stop.

These traits, my boss pointed out, are classic hallmarks of people with Attention Deficit Disorder. He has a daughter with ADD who, after years of special help and attention, has become a straight-A student and has received awards for excellence. In the process of learning about his daughter's condition, he attended many seminars and workshops, one of which pointed out that many people with ADD (and the related ADHD) become tradespeople, paramedics and firefighters, extreme sports athletes, musicians, and so on. A common thread is travel, sometimes daily or hourly, to different job sites and workplaces, providing a varied work environment. Another commonality is that many of these tasks are highly stimulating, involving danger or stress that makes you pay attention to them. I don't have any studies in hand. but most of this info correlates highly with my own personal experience and those of people I've worked with.

The most recent datum: it's taken me two hours to write the proceeding two paragraphs, not because I'm that slow, but because I got sidetracked on a Google search about ADHD, writing another couple of blogging pieces that will be out soon, laying down with my son who was having a tummy ache, went downstairs to get something to eat and then got caught up in a William Holden bio on my local PBS affiliate (curious, I can't seem to find their linking policy on the site anymore.). I never quite understood the ramifications of having ADD personally until being confronted with the possibility that my son might have the condition. Reading about the symptoms I saw plenty of my own personality traits - you can see it in the way I write; tangents, parenthetical and incomplete thoughts. At work I have to write down every measurement, and frequently lose tools that are practically underfoot (my co-workers and I jokingly refer to this area as my "five foot radius"), though I am fairly thorough and meticulous when it comes to the quality of my work and like for my creations to be esthetically pleasing as well as functional (proficient workmanship, as well as efficient engineering, has it's own particular standards of beauty). I also have been accused of spouting Cliff Clavinisms on some obscure but salient point I'm trying to make regarding history, physics, economics, etc. Apparently my long-term memory works fine. Plenty of disk space, not enough RAM.

Music can completely take over my attention in the span of moments so that I completely forget what I was doing before I put it on. My attention can be highly focused, however, when I'm playing music, especially in front of a large crowd. The element of risk concentrates the mind every bit as much as running a sheet of laminate through the table saw. In general, I keep my life proceeding forwards by over-extending myself, filling my schedule with appointments that I have to keep (most of them anyway) or else be thought a flake, an intolerable situation for me to be in. It's like the old joke that Beethoven put these rather prominent timpani flourishes in the second movement of the 9th to keep time, so that, in spite of his hearing deficit, he could still feel the rhythm of the rumbling kettle drums. My method of coping with my deficit of attention has been to use the fear of under-performances as the propellant for my actions, and fully of my own conscious volition. Just ask and I'll tell you that the reason I'm so busy is that I make so many appointments. Nobody's fault but my own.

Now here's the kicker. I have been suffering through an a weird head cold that doesn't give me a cough or a runny nose, just a pressure in the ears and behind the eyes that leaves me spacy and disoriented. I had my wife pick up some non-drowsy sinus medicine. The active ingredients were naproxen sodium, and pseudoephedrine HCL and even though I take in a fair amount of coffee daily, this shit had me tweaked (though the page I linked to says that the drug has "little or no central nervous system stimulation". Maybe there was an adverse reaction to the coffee I had earlier in the day.) I was not my usually good-naturedly cynical self, but became an obsessed machine with the task at hand. I was also able to remember multiple measurements without assistance, could see the necessary steps more clearly ahead and it felt as though I was working a little more efficiently than normal. Hmmm. Ritalin? Who knows. At this point, I'm more interested in getting things done than being 'happy' (which should be the natural side effect of living a life that is lead to the best of it's ability, and not a goal in and of itself, and is, no doubt, a totally different discussion altogether). The older I get the less pride I have, and if using pharmacological assistance will lead to a more productive brain, so be it.
jkb at 1:57 AM

From Caleb Clark - SpaceDev (OTC BB:SPDV.OB) nears completion of a cheap, single-purpose probe that uses TCP/IP exclusively for communications to and from the spacecraft. Press blurb.

CHIPSat is the first mission of NASA's low-cost University-Class Explorer (UNEX). It will be launched for its one-year mission as secondary "piggyback" payload on a Boeing Delta 2 rocket in 2002. The approximately 70 kg micro-spacecraft will carry one science instrument, the Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer, or CHIPS.

The only hitch? It's "Windows and Internet compatible." Question: "Do you know where your spaceship is going today?"

Here's some more info about small probes to Mars.
jkb at 12:23 AM

Fading Art - a note from the info page:

Fading Ad Campaign is a photographic project documenting vintage mural ads on building brickfaces in New York City spanning nearly a century. It has become a metaphor for survival for me since, like myself, many of these ads have long outlived their expected life span.

jkb at 7:52 PM

---

About me and this site =>
My name is John Bordage. I grew up in Maine, went to college in Boston, then moved to San Diego county, where I live with my wife, two kids, a cat, a roommate and his dog. I divide my attention between my family, my steady day-job as a carpenter, my freelance work as a tech consultant, playing drums in two bands, and staring at a computer screen for amusement and edification.

This site was developed using Dreamweaver 3, though the code was mostly writen by hand or cut-and-pasted from other examples. Work was done on both a Celron PC and a Mac G4, depending on which one my daughter was using at the moment.

Disclaimer =>
All opinions writen by me on this site are mine alone, and not those of my employer, my clients, my family, my bands, my mother, my pets, or any other person or entity that is not me. In fact, some of the opinions stated within are not even mine (sometimes I just like to say crap to see what it sounds like).

If you are easily offended, ill humored or just plain ignorant should avoid this whole affair, as I will probably say something to offend just about anyone at least once, unless of course you like to be annoyed, in which case read all you like, see what the fuck I care. Asshole.