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00:04
nwhyte
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/23695253/1071362) [Link] |
Linkspam for 25-12-2009
Tags: add tags, del.icio.us, linkspam
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17:38
pw201
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/95930463/416433) [Link] |
The reason for the season
At this time of year, my thoughts are inevitably drawn towards the time when He will return. Here's a video which I hope will explain what I mean, which you should all take a moment to view. If you have any questions, this leaflet should help to answer them, or you could see my previous posting on the subject.
A very Merry Christmas to all my readers!
Edited to add: if you enjoyed that, you'll probably enjoy the rest: we were listening to them while putting the tree up.
Tags: christmas, cthulhu
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14:22
pw201
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/26500799/416433) [Link] |
Link blog: christianity, religion, education, science
- Tabloid Watch: You can't upset a 14yo girl with leukaemia any more - it's political correctness gone mad!
- The other shoe drops in the "Christian teacher sacked for offering to pray" story (mentioned previously): the parents of the 14 year old with leukaemia have spoken to the press about the teacher's actions. Tabloid Watch links to a bunch of places where it's been reported.
(tags: christianity religion education) - Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up | Magazine
- "The fact is, we carefully edit our reality, searching for evidence that confirms what we already believe. Although we pretend we’re empiricists — our views dictated by nothing but the facts — we’re actually blinkered, especially when it comes to information that contradicts our theories. The problem with science, then, isn’t that most experiments fail — it’s that most failures are ignored."
(tags: science psychology neuroscience brain failure research kuhn) - Overtime by Charles Stross and Carl Wiens
- The Laundry at Christmas, hurrah.
(tags: fiction horror laundry comedy charles-stross sf scifi sci-fi) - Whence Comes God’s Nature?
- "God, so we're told, is eternal and unchanging. He is pure reason, pure mind, pure spirit - no physical needs to fulfill, no past history, none of the contingent events that make humana nature what it is. So how is it that he has, just like us, a complex nature with specific likes and dislikes? He did not undergo the process by which human beings acquire their preferences, so where does he get them from? Why does he prefer things one way and not another?"
(tags: theology religion christianity atheism) - Dark power: Grand designs for interstellar travel - space - 25 November 2009 - New Scientist
- Bussard Ramjets collecting dark matter, and tiny black holes emitting Hawking radiation: two possible starship drive technologies.
(tags: science space flight physics interstellar) - Church recruiting drive targets two-year-olds
- The Graun reports that the Church of England is trying to re-connect with children and teenagers, via youth clubs and providing material for the daily act of collective worship (still legally required in state schools, but often quietly ignored). While I think church schools should not get government funding, on the whole, school assembly Anglicanism is a vaccination against more serious sorts of Christianity, so I'm not as worried as the Graun or the commenters.
(tags: education religion children c-of-e church-of-england anglicanism christianity)
Tags: atheism, charles stross, christianity, education, link blog, psychology, religion, science
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12:32
nickbarnes
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/15883974/3421091) [Link] |
2009 annual newsletter
Here. Pictures here. Merry Christmas, one and all.
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20:31
nwhyte
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/25666919/1071362) [Link] |
December Books 8) Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut
Rereading this classic, which combines the horrors of the 1945 bombing of Dresden with the sfnal captivity of the hero by the aliens of Tralfamadore. Having first come to Vonnegut via Cat's Cradle and The Sirens of Titan as a teenager, I wasn't really sure what to make of this. Coming to it again a quarter-century later, I have a much deeper appreciation of Vonnegut's savaging of the surrealism of war, and of how trauma throws the rest of your life into a weird perspective. But I also find his attitude to women much more annoying - at least, to the women in the main part of the story, the mothers of Billy Pilgrim's children, Valencia Merble and Montana Wildhack (and Pilgrim's daughter Barbara). Having said that, the sanest character in the book is probably Mary O'Hare from the ostensibly autobiographical foreword; and it must also be admitted that most of the male characters are pretty unpleasant too.
Anyway, I can't think of many other sf novels which take the Second World War as their subject, and this is probably the best in that rather small set.
Tags: bookblog 2009, rereads, writer: kurt vonnegut
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00:06
nwhyte
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/43790209/1071362) [Link] |
Linkspam for 23-12-2009
Tags: add tags, del.icio.us, linkspam
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13:42
nwhyte
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/9299443/1071362) [Link] |
Email scam
I was surprised to receive this distressing message just now, ostensibly from one of my cousins: ( Read more... ) There are numerous clues here to indicate that the message is a fake, the first being that it was sent to me at all - if one of my Irish cousins was really stuck in Manchester, there are at least a dozen other mutual relatives whom it would be more sensible to contact than me. Note also the complete lack of corroborating details (name of hotel, identification of embassy, salutation of recipient). Also my cousin is, as far as I know, unlikely to need to make a research trip to Manchester.
Assuming that my cousin's email address has been hacked, it would be rather pointless to reply to the scam artist - or are these emails simply sent as harassment, without the expectation of pecuniary gain? I have alerted my aunt and my cousin's sister, since they all live in the same town, and suggested that the Gardai also be alerted. Though I guess there is a good chance that the hacker lives a long way outside their jurisdiction.
Edited to add [ten hours later, sorry, I've been busy] the message originated from 41.217.65.4 which is an IP address registered to Zoom Mobile, a telcom company in, surprise surprise, Nigeria.
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10:48
cantabrigiensis
[1ngi]
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/50853613/10551215) [Link] |
Cash machine theft alert
I subscribe to Cambridge e-cops and this was in our weekly e-newsletter today:
( Teams of 2 + 3 distracting people as they take money out... )
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20:30
pw201
[Link] |
Link blog: funny, politics, equality, humour
- Heresy Corner: Equality before the law
- "If Harriet Harman's odious Equality Bill reaches the statute book in anything like its current form (in other words, if the House of Lords doesn't manage to delay it before a general election intervenes) then there may well be social and legal chaos in this country. There will also be a lot more work for lawyers. A lot." - Heresiarch reckons the Equality Bill is a bad thing.
(tags: law politics equality) - Killing In The Climb - rathergood.com
- Why have them vying for the Christmas number one when you can combine them?
(tags: music video rathergood funny mashup) - DAVID SIMON - Vice Magazine
- "David Simon is responsible for one of the greatest feats of storytelling of the past century, and that’s the entire five-season run of the television series The Wire." - Vice Magazine interview him.
(tags: vicemagazine the-wire tv-programmes tv television wire crime drugs politics journalism) - Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates World | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
- Members of the earth's earliest known civilization, the Sumerians, looked on in shock and confusion some 6,000 years ago as God, the Lord Almighty, created Heaven and Earth.
(tags: religion funny onion history creationism) - IEEE Spectrum: Math Quiz: Why Do Men Predominate?
- "among top math performers, the gender gap doesn’t exist in some ethnic groups and in some countries. The researchers conclude that culture is the main reason more men excel at the highest math levels in most countries."
(tags: maths mathematics gender feminism equality) - The C Programming Language: 4.10 by Brian W Kernighan & Dennis M Ritchie & HP Lovecraft
- "C functions may be used recursively; that is, a function may call itself either directly or indirectly. Uninquiring souls may take this as just another peculiarity of those C folk, of whose ways their neighbours speak little to outsiders but much among themselves.
Keener news-followers, however, wondered at the events of the winter of 1927-28, the abnormally large number of calls placed upon the stack, the swiftness with which that list was sorted, the disturbing lack of heap allocation throughout the proceedings, and the secrecy surrounding the affair."
(tags: funny humour parody C programming lovecraft horror)
Tags: creationism, feminism, funny, history, journalism, law, link blog, music, politics, programming, religion, television, tv programmes
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10:20
nwhyte
[Link] |
December Books 7) Mr Singh Has Disappeared: A Concussed Novel, by Horst Prillinger
This was pressed on me by the infamous quarsan, and his efforts have been duly rewarded; I really enjoyed it. It is a fairly short novel, told in fragmentary, disjointed style (150 chapters in 135 pages) about the narrator's investigation of the disappearance of the head waiter of his favourite Indian restaurant. He spends a lot of time stuck down a well, in hospital, and musing on the precise nature of the vindaloo, the biryani and other Indian recipes. It is a real classic of surreal style, very funny in places. Interested to note that it was originally published in blog format earlier this year; the hard copy costs €10 and comes from amazon.de among other places.
Tags: bookblog 2009
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21:03
pw201
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/95957794/416433) [Link] |
"Teacher suspended in prayer row"
The BBC reports that Olive Jones, a school teacher who's also a Christian, was suspended for offering to pray for a sick pupil. This case looks similar to that of Caroline Petrie, a nurse who was also suspended (though later reinstated) after she offered to pray for a patient.
The Daily Mail has a longer interview with Mrs Jones than the BBC. I take articles in the Heil with a pinch of salt, but I assume they wouldn't directly misquote her, as they're on her side. Some salient points from their story: Jones is a supply teacher who visits the homes of kids who are too ill to come to school. After a previous incident, she'd been warned before that it wasn't appropriate to pray with her pupils. The parent who complained had previously complained after Jones gave a testimony (evangelical jargon, usually referring to a story about how someone became a Christian, told for the purpose of evangelism, though in this case it was about how God saved her from being crushed by a tractor) in front of the parent, but the complaint hadn't reached the right people, so when she did so again in front of the parent and child and also offered to pray, the parent complained to the school. Mrs Jones is now suspended pending an investigation. It's not clear whether the decision to investigate happened after the press got involved: it looks like Jones is a contractor who can be fired without notice, not a full time employee of the school.
Inevitably, the Heil's commenters, and those at Cranmer's blog, blame Muslims, political correctness, New Labour etc. etc. I suspect that if the story had been about a Muslim or Pagan doing what Mrs Jones did, the Mail's take on it would have been rather different (though I hope that the school's response would not have been).
Jones's actions as described by the Heil seemed to me to be deserving of disciplinary action from her employers. The same would apply if a Muslim or a Pagan had done the same, or if a strident neo-sceptical toxic rationalist neo-atheist had told the kid there's no God and no miracles. Teachers aren't paid to give unprompted religious "testimonies", and shouldn't assume that they're welcome (especially in someone's home). If the parent or the kid had asked about Jones's religious beliefs, it'd be different, but there's no evidence that this happened. It's beholden on the school to ensure they comply with employment law, and firing for the first offence seems too harsh, but if someone's on an at-will contract and has been warned once before, I can perfectly understand the decision to fire them.
I don't think this is a free speech issue: Jones is free to pray on her own time (which will surely be as effective as praying with the family), and indeed, she was free to do what the Heil said she did and accept the consequences.
Tom Harris, MP and Ian Dale have further thoughts on the matter.
Edited to add: Tabloid Watch has the story from the parents who complained. Their daughter is 14 and has leukaemia, and they'd endured Jones's evangelism for a while before complaining.
Tags: christianity, education, evangelism, politics, religion
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17:24
nwhyte
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/57943376/1071362) [Link] |
The overnights meme
List the towns or cities where you spent at least a night away from home during 2009. Mark with a star if you had multiple non-consecutive stays.
( 13 )
A lot fewer than some years. But also addfour overnight flights - two transatlantic, two between Europe and Africa.
Tags: travels
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15:19
nwhyte
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/42399475/1071362) [Link] |
I don't have a vote in this one...
...but like a lot of people I'll be watching with interest for the outcome of the selection process for the next Lib Dem candidate in Cambridge, now that David Howarth has announced his intention to return to his academic career (he is a specialist in tort, if that is the right way to put it). Of the six shortlistees (listed here and also here) the only one I know at all is Julie Smith. I know David Howarth rather better since we were actually next door neighbours during my second year, as well as being Lib Dem activists at the same college. David won in 2005 on his third attempt with a majority of 10%, having eaten substantially into both the incumbent Labour MP's vote and into that of the Conservatives who held the seat from 1967 to 1992. Assuming (as seems likely) that the Labour vote tanks, the Lib Dems hold steady and the Tories rise but not dramatically, the seat should be holdable in next year's election
Tags: lib dems
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11:07
nwhyte
[Link] |
December Books 7) Doctor Who and the Invasion from Space [by J.L. Morrissey]
 I thought I was reasonably well-informed about the history of Doctor Who spinoff fiction, but was rather amazed to discover this 1966 46-page story, in the same format (and by the same publisher) as the Doctor Who annuals, in which the First Doctor prevents an invasion from the Andromeda galaxy with the help of a family who he has rescued (just before the story starts) from the Great Fire of London. Apparently the text is by J.L. Morrissey, who published half a dozen detective novels in the 1930s and 1940s; the artwork is by Walter Howarth, the World Distributors stalwart illustrator. The story itself is standard Who, let down by rather dodgy astrophysics and some awkward phrasing (note extract from first para here). But the characterisation of Hartnell's Doctor is bang-on.
Tags: bookblog 2009, doctor who, doctor who: 01
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10:35
nwhyte
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/56427496/1071362) [Link] |
ርሑስ በዓል ልደትን ሓድሽ ዓመትን
A friend of mine sent me this greeting:
which apparently means "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year" in his native language.
A special prize for the first person to identify that language!
(And a very special prize for anyone who knows how to pronounce it...)
ETA: Well done ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bugshaw! Others may guess anyway by clicking on "reply" without reading what others have written.
Tags: alphabets
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00:47
pw201
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/19160515/416433) [Link] |
Evidence that doesn't demand anything very much
A couple of the blogs I read recently had discussions on the resurrection of Jesus: Common Sense Atheism and Parchment and Pen.
The wrong kind of God
 In the comment thread over at Comment Sense Atheism, I wondered about the role of natural theology (that is, stuff like the Kalam Cosmological Argument) in preparing the ground for belief in the resurrection. When William Lane Craig debated against Bart Ehrman, Craig said "That Jesus rose naturally from the dead is fantastically improbable. But I see no reason whatsoever to think that it is improbable that God raised Jesus from the dead." According to Ayer (that is, the commenter over at Common Sense Atheism, not the logical positivist), "Natural theology shows the existence of the monotheistic God; the resurrection, in its religio-historical context, shows that that monotheistic God is the one described by Jesus and the disciples, whose redemptive purpose is laid out in the Bible."
There's an unwarranted assumption here. Suppose we grant, for the sake of argument, that the Kalam argument is valid. This gets us as far as deism. To get to Christianity, we need the resurrection, as Ayer says. But if God didn't do it, the resurrection is fantastically improbable, which I think means the New Testament evidence alone shouldn't convince us unless we assume that God is the sort of god who might raise Jesus from the dead. But why should we assume that? Remember, we need that assumption to bolster the NT evidence sufficiently for us to believe it, but the only available "evidence" that God is that sort of god is the resurrection itself, the very thing we're seeking to prove. I've not seen an argument from Craig (or any other apologist) which avoids this apparent circularity.
Simple explanations
 So we're stuck with being deists, which is a bit boring: as far as I know, they don't have any choons. Perhaps we might instead argue that the New Testament evidence is sufficient on its own: it shows Jesus rose, and hence (if we're feeling charitable about it) that there's a god of the right sort, Christianity is true, greatest hits of Charles Wesley here we come.
This was what the Parchment and Pen posting was about. C Michael Patton argues that alternative explanations are less simple than just accepting that Jesus rose from the dead. There was a thread on the local newsgroup, cam.misc, where another Christian made the same argument.
I remembered that Heinlein once said the simplest explanation is always "The lady down the street is a witch; she did it." What's wrong with that explanation? It hides complexity behind language, as Alex Selby explains. I ended up saying that the Christian account is "simpler" in some sense, but not in a sense that lends it credibility. In this sense, the "simplest" explanation for what you see in Derren Brown's stage shows is that mind reading really works and he's a master at it: all that other stuff he does to achieve the effects is extremely convoluted in comparison. Alex doesn't think we should describe that sense as simple. I can see his point, and perhaps I should have said that the Christian account feels simpler, rather than that it is.
At this point, a popular apologetic move is to accuse your opponent of assuming naturalism, materialism, scientism and other bad -isms (remember: if you have no other arguments, you can always play Name that Worldview). I'm not sure whether that's a valid move. I think you'd need an argument that using this informational Occam's Razor won't do the job in the case of non-material stuff, which again, I haven't seen anyone attempt.
Tags: christianity, occam's razor, rationality, religion, resurrection, william lane craig
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00:04
nwhyte
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/92392149/1071362) [Link] |
Gibbon, Chapter XIII
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Another very long chapter, but an excellent read, full of incident and character. Diocletian comes over as one of the best emperors so far - a slave from Illyria who rose to the top, managed it well, and retired in time to enjoy his later years plating cabbages by the Adriatic. In the meantime he puts down Carausius' rebellion in Britain, wins a war with Persia and sorts out the empire by dividing it into four. Of course, that simply meant new structures that could go wrong; but it was a good solution to the problem of unmanageability.
Tags: add tags, del.icio.us, linkspam
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22:10
nwhyte
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/56983988/1071362) [Link] |
An Earthly Child - spoilers
I feel a bit mean posting this, because the other reviews I've seen so far of An Earthly Child are rather positive (without spoilers here and with spoilers here). I think Marc Platt's scripts are a bit like Marmite - you love 'em or hate 'em. However, to explain why I didn't like it requires a cut-tag and spoiler warning, thus:
( Read more... )
Tags: doctor who, doctor who: 08, writer: marc platt
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18:43
nwhyte
[Link] |
Snowbound, and social media
It won't have escaped notice that the weather has been a bit cold round here of late. Some (including one who works in the same building as me) think we should take it in our stride, and to an extent I agree that one should try and be slightly Zen about it. But sometimes this is not easy.
Thursday night was a bad night. I was rather enjoying myself at a Bosnian embassy reception when I bit awkwardly on a (really yummy) piece of Baklava and my tooth, re-filled only that morning, began hurting like the blazes. I made my excuses to the ambassadors (the one I was talking to at the time, and the one hosting the party) and hurried as fast as I could to the tram and the Gare du Midi / Zuidstation. Less than 40 minutes later I had reached Leuven station, only 7 km from home. But Leuven was snowbound; the rest of the journey took over two hours, as buses failed to show up and trains were cancelled; eventually I trudged to the warmth of the Novotel and called a cab from there, jaw still aching.
Since then it's been OK here, but we were really alarmed to hear of the Channel Tunnel being closed - and 2000 passengers stuck inside it! - since we were due to head over to the in-laws' tomorrow for a couple of days before Christmas. There is no reliable information available on the Eurostar / Eurotunnel site; but in the Twitter era, you cannot escape instant and public consumer feedback. It is clear that traffic is backed up for hours around Calais and Dover / Folkestone, and there are worrying reports of chaos at the loading ramps. There is no way we can take the risk of travelling with a severely autistic child (who will turn seven on Monday) and being stuck in traffic for hours, so we are not going tomorrow - particularly since the forecast is for more heavy snow precisely in western Belgium and the Pas-de Calais overnight - and quite likely will not go on Monday either. Alas, no pantomime for F, and no reunion with Anne's cousins either. But sometimes you have to accept force majeure.
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15:43
reading_gibbon
[nwhyte]
[Link] |
Chapter XIII: Diocletian
Read it here, here, or here.
1) Good quotes
On the man himself: His abilities were useful rather than splendid - a vigorous mind improved by the experience and study of mankind; dexterity and application in business; a judicious mixture of liberality and economy, of mildness and rigour; profound dissimulation under the disguise of military frankness; steadiness to pursue his ends; flexibility to vary his means; and, above all, the great art of submitting his own passions, as well as those of others, to the interest of his ambition, and of colouring his ambition with the most specious pretences of justice and public utility. On alchemy: It may be remarked that these ancient books, so liberally ascribed to Pythagoras, to Solomon, or to Hermes, were the pious frauds of more recent adepts. The Greeks were inattentive either to the use or to the abuse of chymistry. In that immense register where Pliny has deposited the discoveries, the arts, and the errors of mankind, there is not the least mention of the transmutation of metals; and the persecution of Diocletian is the first authentic event in the history of alchymy. The conquest of Egypt by the Arabs diffused that vain science over the globe. Congenial to the avarice of the human heart, it was studied in China as in Europe, with equal eagerness, and with equal success. The darkness of the middle ages ensured a favourable reception to every tale of wonder, and the revival of learning gave new vigour to hope, and suggested more specious arts of deception. Philosophy, with the aid of experience, has at length banished the study of alchymy; and the present age, however desirous of riches, is content to seek them by the humbler means of commerce and industry. Note how the Egyptians are to blame (again).
2) Chapter Summary Another very long chapter, but an excellent read, full of incident and character - not surprisingl my condensed Wordsworth edition skips straight to this after Chapter IX. Diocletian comes over as one of the best emperors so far - a slave from Illyria who rose to the top, managed it well, and retired in time to enjoy his later years plating cabbages by the Adriatic. In the meantime he puts down Carausius' rebellion in Britain, wins a war with Persia and sorts out the empire by dividing it into four. Of course, that simply meant new structures that could go wrong; but it was a good solution to the problem of unmanageability.
3) Points arising
i) Christianity
...simply isn't mentioned here, despite the notoriety of Diocletian's persecution of the Christians. Presumably Gibbon will cover this in Chapters XV and XVI, and is here cocking a snook at the pro-Christian writers for whom Diocletian is an unmitigated villain. NB that Gibbon does praise Diocletian's suppression of alchemy, a Levantine superstition with pretensions to deeper truths.
ii) Carausius
I give Gibbon credit for not giving Carausius too much space, even though his rebellion is the only interesting thing that has happened in Britain for 200 years.
iii) the Persian borderlands
Gibbon simply doesn't care much about geographical details, I think. I caught him out about the location of Margus in the last chapter, and in Chapter X we had that confusion about the Bosphorus. He thinks that the provinces of Intiline and Moxoene, rather than Rehimene and Sophene, were ceded to the Romans along with Zabdicene, Arzanene and Carducene, but he doesn't really care: these are "districts of obscure fame and inconsiderable extent" (apart from the last which is effectively Kurdistan). Certainly it is difficult to correlate them with today's political geography. Gibbon has the Araxes River as a tributary to the Euphrates, when in fact it flows into the Caspian; the river course he describes is more like that of the Khabur.
iv) Split
The ruins of Diocletian's home town, Doclea, from which he took his name, are just a short walk from the centre of Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro - I must have a look next time I am there.
Diocletian's residence in his retirement became the nucleus of the medieval town which is today Croatia's second city. In 1764 the Scottish architect Robert Adam published his Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia, and Gibbon clearly knew and loved the book, which showed the survival of an entire classical building project in a forgotten corner of the Venetian Republic and was apparently tremendously influential in the development of the neoclassical architectural style of the late 18th century. I went for the first time in 1996, and it is an amazing thing to see the 1600-year-old walls still in use. (Adam's illustrations make them look more romantically worn down and overgrown than I suspect they were even when he visited in 1757.) What struck me was that in the middle of this building, constructed about 300 AD, was an Egyptian sphinx which was twice as old; and that also the doors of today's cathedral, a significant work in themselves, date from 1220 (the cathedral still has the original paperwork), so are almost precisely half the age of the building on which they hang.
Another error in detail I have to report: Gibbon follows Adam in describing the cathedral at Split as having formerly been the Temple of Jupiter, so it is not his fault that he is wrong. But today it is universally believed that the cathedral was constructed as Diocletian's own mausoleum. There is a certain irony in this; he would be turning in his grave at the idea of it being a place of Christian worship, had they not turfed him out of it. Rebecca West, whose prose style is generally even better than Gibbon's, has a lovely and moving speculation as to how his body might have got lost: For about a hundred and seventy years the sarcophagus of Diocletian was visible, firmly planted in the middle of the mausoleum, described by intelligent visitors. Then it suddenly was not there any more. It is suggested that a party of revengeful Christians threw it into the sea; but that is an action comprehensible only in a smouldering minority, and Christianity had been the official religion of the Roman Empire since the time of the Emperor's death. Nor can it be supposed that the sarcophagus was destroyed by the Avar invaders, for they did not reach the coast until a couple of centuries later. Probably the occasion of its disappearance was far less dramatic.
The everyday routine of life persisted in Aspalaton, however many barbarians committed murder; in the textile factory the shuttles crossed and recrossed the loom. Without doubt it continued to be necessary that Diocletian's mausoleum should be cleaned and repaired, and one day the owner of a yard near by may have said, "Yes, you may put it down there," and watched the sarcophagus reverently, wondering that he should be the guardian of such a holy thing. It may be also that the workmen who laid it down did not come back, that there was a threat to the city from land or sea which called them and the authorities who employed them and the owner of the yard himself to the defense. Soon it might be that people would say of the sarcophagus, "I wonder when they will come and take it back"; but continued unrest might make it advisable that the treasures of the temples should be kept dispersed. Not so much later it might be that a break in a chain of family confidences, due to violent death or flight or even natural death, if it were sudden, would leave the sarcophagus unidentified and only vaguely important. Some day a woman would say of it, "I really do not know what that is. It is just something that has always been here; and it is full of old things." She spoke the truth. It was full of old things: the bones of Diocletian the man, the robes of Diocletian the Emperor, the idea of a world order imposed on the peoples by superior people, who were assumed to know because they could act. Aspalaton, the palace of the great Restorer of the Earth, had passed away. It had become Split, a city lived in by common people, who could establish order within the limits of a kitchen or a workshop or a textile factory, but had been monstrously hindered in the exercise of that capacity by the efforts of the superior people who establish world order.
I have no doubt that one day Diocletian's sarcophagus will turn up in the cellar of an old and absent-minded family of Split; and in the cellar of the Dalmatian mind, the foundation on which its present philosophy is built, the old Emperor is to be found also. 4) Coming next
Chapter XIV: Between Diocletian and Constantine. Read it here, here or here.
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12:11
nwhyte
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/37240983/1071362) [Link] |
Ow continued
( Dental TMI )
Tags: dentistry, ooogh
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11:19
nwhyte
[Link] |
Lots of Who (mostly audio)
It's been a good few weeks for us Who fans who follow audio as well as TV. The last two parts of BBC audio The Hornet's Nest, starring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, shipped at the start of the month; for Fifth Doctor fans, we have had the last two of the three Big Finish audios set in Stockbridge and co-starring Sarah Sutton as Nyssa, and also a Companion Chronicle told by Mark Strickson as Turlough; the Sixth and Eighth Doctors both went to Blackpool, and the Eighth Doctor also went back to a future Earth to see his granddaughter; and for good measure I'm throwing in the animated story "Dreamland" and the audiobook "Day of the Troll", both featuring David Tennant in his closing days as the Tenth Doctor. To put you out of your agony of suspense, I will reveal now that I thought the best and worst of these were the two Eight Doctor stories; read on to discover which was which. I believe I have avoided significant spoilers - though this is not always true of the reviews I have linked to.
( Hornets' Nest: Part 4, A Sting in the Tale and Part 5, Hive of Horrors )
( Three Fifth Doctor plays )
( The Nightmare Fair: the Sixth Doctor goes to Blackpool )
( Death in Blackpool: the Eighth Doctor goes there too )
( Dreamland: Tenth Doctor and aliens in Nevada )
( December Books 6: The Day of the Troll )
Tags: bookblog 2009, doctor who, doctor who: 04, doctor who: 05, doctor who: 06, doctor who: 08, doctor who: 10, writer: simon messingham
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22:05
nwhyte
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/45628984/1071362) [Link] |
Most commented posts of the last year
Posts since I last counted that got more than 20 comments - 42 in total, top 21 bolded, top 14 and top 7 in larger fonts.
( 42 most commented posts out of about 1100 )
So it's polls, controversial science fiction, and real life evil scientists that generate the most comments here.
One interesting thing (well, interesting to me) is that as Facebook starts to devour the internet, my posts of LJ entries to there are starting to spark discussion as well - and it is a completely different set of posts which get the most attention. More than ten comments were made on the following (there may have been others, but it is very tedious to chase these things down on Facebook):
( ten posts with ten or more comments )
Now, six of these are fairly hard politics posts, and I guess my facebook readership, being more reflective of my professional environment, is more likely to comment on those. But I find it peculiar that of the various posts I made about Torchwood: Children of Earth, two scored high on Facebook but a completely different one scored on Livejournal. I guess it is sometimes just a matter of the post catching the attention of potential commenters; a matter more of luck than judgement.
Tags: facebook, livejournal
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11:28
nwhyte
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/55623118/1071362) [Link] |
Michael Moorcock
is 70 today!
Tags: writer: michael moorcock
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07:55
nwhyte
[Link] |
The results from yesterday's poll
Thanks to the 97 people who have so far answered yesterday's scripts poll. The results are rather neatly bunched into four groups: 14 could be seen by at least 83 of the 97; there were a further 8 in the 47-62 range; there is a cluster of 3 which could be seen by 15-21 people; and one outlier which only I could see when logged in using Firefox.
( The top 14 )
( the next eight )
( three less popular scripts )
( the last one )
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00:14
pw201
[Link] |
Books: the Greg Mandel trilogy, by Peter F Hamilton
Peter F Hamilton's Greg Mandel books are the only cyberpunk stories I know of set in and around Peterborough. As my memories of the place are of being dragged around the big shopping centres there as a kid, it's hardly a name to conjure with: it's like setting your story in Milton Keynes, or something (though Charles Stross did that successfully). After global warming, Peterborough has a Mediterranean climate (a little far-fetched, perhaps, but I can't quite remember how much we knew about global warming in 1993, when the first book was published). At the edge of the flooded Fens, it's thriving port, filled with refugees from the floods, smugglers and whatnot.
The trilogy follows Greg Mandel, a former officer in the English Army who fought in the Jihad Wars. Mandel was given psychic powers as part of an experimental unit, the Mindstar Brigade. He can sense strong emotions, and gets flashes of intuition. Now a civilian, he makes a living as a private detective. As the trilogy begins, England has just revolted against the People's Socialist Party, who took power in the chaos after the Warming. When the PSP largely disbanded the army, Mandel spent some time as an urban guerilla on the council estates of Peterborough, fighting with the PSP's supporters. As we first meet him, he's on his way to assassinate a former member of the hated People's Constables, who used to beat people well with their magic wellness sticks. He's soon tangled up in solving problems for Event Horizon, an emerging English mega-corporation. Event Horizon aren't a stereotypical evil corporation: they're the good guys, a sort of mega family firm. Julia Evans, the boss, is another recurring character in the books, though, reassuringly, she's not Mandel's love interest.
Reading the books after The Magicians, I found Hamilton's style tight and easy to read rather than sparkling or poetic. Sometimes we get a cyberpunk version of Hello magazine: he's got an irritating habit of carefully describing what people are wearing when he introduces them and detailing the makes and models of cars, weapons and so on; and almost everyone is beautiful. That said, the plot rattles along satisfyingly, with some gripping set-pieces. Of course, there are big corporations who duel via their hired mercenaries, spies and hackers, but these standard cyperpunk elements are combined with mysteries for Mandel to solve, mixing the SF stuff with detective fiction.
Hamilton went on to write several door-stops in the Night's Dawn trilogy (the dead come back... in space, with Al Capone as the principal villain: strangely not as bad as it sounds, although the ending was a let down) and the Commonwealth Saga (which contains the neat idea of running railway lines through stable wormholes). I like the Greg Mandel books for their comparative brevity, pace, and their English take on cyberpunk.
Tags: books, science fiction
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21:07
nwhyte
[Link] |
December Books 5) Frayed, by 'Tara Samms'
Stephen Cole is one of the most consistently good Doctor Who writers, and I was glad to pick up this Telos novella when last in London - a range that has not always impressed me, but this is one of the good ones. It is a little odd - the old man and the girl who travels with them only decide at the end of the story that they will adopt the identities of "the Doctor" and "Susan", and the story combines the fairly standard base-under-siege-by-telepathic-horror story with a rather subtly done reflection on establishing and keeping identity. Worth looking out for.
Tags: bookblog 2009, doctor who, doctor who: 01, writer: stephen cole
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13:54
dotaturls
[Link] |
Object/relational mapping is the Vietnam war of computer science.
http://blogs.tedneward.com/2006/06/26/The+Vietnam+Of+Computer+Science.aspx http://dotat.at/:/6M6WJ.html Object/relational mapping is the Vietnam war of computer science.
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08:10
dotaturls
[Link] |
James Randi, global warming, Bertrand Russell, and the nature of scepticism.
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2009/12/james-randi-global-warming-and-nature.html http://dotat.at/:/W755H.html James Randi, global warming, Bertrand Russell, and the nature of scepticism.
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08:17
nwhyte
[Link] |
Not everyone uses our calendar but most have a word for December
Clarification / correction - when I ask "can you read" in the poll (which of course I cannot edit now) I meant "can you see the letters clearly", not "can you read and comprehend"!!!
Poll #1500085
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 110Which of these various languages can you read? (The word in question is, I think, the word for December in the most widely spoken language using that alphabet - so no Farsi, Urdu, Marathi, Ukrainian or Yiddish I'm afraid)
For those languages marked with asterisks, I couldn't find or didn't like the word for 'December' so used 'Christmas' instead.
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16:45
fanf
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/4175377/936728) [Link] |
stupid email disclaimers
Dear morons, I'm glad to know that this important marketing message is confidential, and that I shouldn't tell anyone about your branding change even though it's obvious because you are changing the signs on your buildings.
PS. if you are going to use an email service provider to send this shit, at least you could hire one that is able to delete your misleading disclaimers first.
Received: from mail.highford.com ([213.210.16.63]:53904)
by ppsw-6.csi.cam.ac.uk (mx.cam.ac.uk [131.111.8.146]:25)
Message-Id: <curu/yjjezx3xvv8q6i5ew@hearfrom.com>
From: Bradford & Bingley <news@savings.bradford-bingley.co.uk>
To: Mr Finch <dot@dotat.at>
Subject: Update Bradford & Bingley Savings changing to Santander
Dear Mr Finch,
As of 11 January 2010 Abbey National plc which includes the
Bradford & Bingley savings business will change its name to
Santander UK plc and operate under the brand name of Santander.
[...]
This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential
and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to
whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in
error please notify the system manager.
[...]
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12:13
dotaturls
[Link] |
Nominet deletes 1200 .co.uk domains that the police say are used by criminal counterfeiters.
http://www.nominet.org.uk/news/latest/?contentId=6900 http://dotat.at/:/HZZ2D.html Nominet deletes 1200 .co.uk domains that the police say are used by criminal counterfeiters.
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11:44
dotaturls
[Link] |
Current status of DNSSEC in various TLDs.
http://mail.shinkuro.com:8100/Lists/dnssec-deployment/Message/2554.html http://dotat.at/:/T6F52.html Current status of DNSSEC in various TLDs.
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11:35
dotaturls
[Link] |
Root-DNSSEC.org - information about DNSSEC for the root zone.
http://www.root-dnssec.org/ http://dotat.at/:/Y8NHT.html Root-DNSSEC.org - information about DNSSEC for the root zone.
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09:21
nwhyte
[Link] |
Livejournal v Dreamwidth
Musing a bit more on yesterday's kerfuffle, I think Livejournal come out of it rather well and Dreamwidth rather badly.
Livejournal's senior manager responded to me with the words "this was a mistake" and assured me that the proposed change was not being implemented. Their Customer Care folks then followed up with an explicit statement that "We understand that gender is not binary, and intend to respect that understanding for our users." That seems to me entirely satisfactory. Someone wrote something which did not suit the organisation for which they work, and it is therefore not being used. In the public policy environment where I work, that happens all the time, particularly if (as I suspect here) there are people of varying linguistic and cultural backgrounds involved. Indeed, what is unusual here is the level of transparency at the drafting stage - a rather courageous approach for which one sometimes (as in this case) pays a price.
The whole kerfuffle began with a post by one of Dreamwidth's co-owners, a former Livejournal staffer, which inaccurately presented the coding change as a done deal, an irreversible decision. You will note also that in the comments on yesterday's post, a Dreamwidth staffer accuses Livejournal of lying to me, without evidence; and also makes the shocking assertion that Livejournal has been listening to its users, as if this were in some way outrageous.
Dreamwidth have gained a number of extra customers from Livejournal out of all this, based on a report from their own leadership which turns out not to be true, with the flames of this controversy being further deliberately fanned by their own staff even after Livejournal had resolved it. It is very easy to whip up fears of oppression among people who experience it regularly. It is more difficult in such circumstances to admit that you were wrong. I don't think this affair looks very good for a company which was supposed to represent a more ethical approach to the business of blogging.
I am also perturbed by comments I have seen here and there about this somehow being the fault of the Russians, including the fact that the senior Livejournal manager who responded to me and to many others does not write perfect English and has a foreign name (which looks Ukrainian rather than Russian to me, but what do I know). Really, folks, get a grip. You have no idea how privileged you are to be native speakers of the world's main language of communication. In any case I seem to remember that the frequency of Livejournal screwups was much greater, and that they were handled far more ineptly, when it was owned by Americans. SUP are running a tighter ship; the President of Russia is one of their customers.
Tags: dreamwidth, livejournal
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04:06
nwhyte
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/43109750/1071362) [Link] |
Four counties, rather than six?
An occasional correspondent emails me to ask about this passage from the memoirs of H.H. Asquith, the British prime minister, of 24 July 1914 (which I have transcribed on my website: Later we had a meeting at Downing Street - Redmond [the Irish Nationalist leader], Dillon [Redmond's deputy], Ll[oyd] G[eorge], Birrell and I. I told them that I must go on with the Amending Bill, without the time limit: to which, after a good deal of demur, the Irishmen reluctantly agreed.' I should explain that for some enthusiasts of Irish history, rerunning the partition of the island is a favourite pastime, and the most significant point of departure is the conference held at Buckingham Palace in July 1914, to try to get agreement on what parts of Ulster should be excluded from the jurisdiction of an autonomous Home Rule government in Ireland. Unionists wanted the permanent exclusion of all nine counties of Ulster; Nationalists were prepared to accept the temporary exclusion of the four counties with Protestant majorities. Asquith, as prime minister, rapidly settled on the six-county unit we have today as the obvious compromise, largely because the Unionists indicated that they too would settle for it. But the passage above indicates that on the day the negotiations broke down, Asquith was instead heading for "county option" the holding of referendums in each county. My correspondent asks: As I read this, Redmond and Dillon were prepared to agree to 'County Option' permanently, rather than for only 6 years. I think that, if implemented, this would have led to a 4-county Northern Ireland. It does seem strange that this concession was not revisited when Lloyd George carried out his negotiations in 1916 [when he was asked to find a way of implementing Irish Home Rule immediately after the Easter Rising, but failed]. I would be interested in any comments you might have. My reply:
I think it's pretty clear that Carson et al - the Unionists in Ulster - were prepared to go to civil war - which they would have won - rather than give up Tyrone and Fermanagh. So Asquith would have been unable to sell such a deal to them and the British Conservatives in 1914. In any case I wonder how solid Redmond and Dillon's agreement was - I don't read it as more than assent that Asquith should try this course, but they had probably made the same calculation as I do above, ie that it would not fly with the Unionists. Having said that, of course your interpretation may be correct; there was a Nationalist delusion that any Northern Ireland state of any size would be economically unviable and would wither away. (Similar arguments were successfully used in Cyprus in the 2004 referendum campaign, but in both cases they proved incorrect.)
To be honest I think it was a lucky escape for all of us. The experience of such referendums elsewhere has not been happy. The very prospect of the vote would have been a spark for horrible violence, probably not restricted to Fermanagh and Tyrone. Since the UVF were better prepared than the Nationalists or the British Army in 1914, a referendum proposal would certainly have triggered mass displacements of Catholics by Loyalists from all over what would probably have become the Six (or Five and a Half) counties. The Upper Silesia plebiscite of 1921 shows what can happen. The Unionists had no interest in allowing due process to separate Tyrone and Fermanagh from the other four counties. The border as it was established reflected the balance of potential coercive force at the time it was drawn - as do most borders.
You also ask about 1916. Lloyd George was after a quick fix, and holding six county option referenda in the middle of a war is not a quick fix. He needed something that the leaders could agree to, and implement, right away. I imagine that if he had succeeded, there would have been no elections until after the war was over but Redmond would have been put immediately in charge of a 26-county administration of some kind.
That was my reply to my correspondent. The one point I should have added, of course, is that Asquith was rather prone to changing his mind, and what he thought he would do on 24 July might well have been a different matter even without the distraction of war breaking out in Europe.
Tags: world: ireland, world: northern ireland
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14:35
mathew_rss
[Link] |
Google Wishes You Merry Christmas, Launches Google Santa Initiative
http://meta.ATH0.com/2009/12/15/google-wishes-you-merry-christmas-launches-google-santa-initiative/ http://meta.ATH0.com/?p=4301 Lack of Information at North Pole Leads Google to Draft New Privacy Policies
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – December 15, 2009 UTC – As the holiday season continued, Google Inc. today announced that it is modifying its privacy policies in a new two-part Google Santa initiative.
The inspiration for the Google Santa project came from the realization that Santa has very little information to go on when judging whether people are naughty or nice. Now, thanks to Google’s advanced data mining systems, Santa will be given access to your search history, a log of all the web sites you visit which use Google Analytics, any passwords needed to access them from your Google Toolbar, the contents of your Gmail account, and complete transcripts of any Google Talk IM conversations made in the last year.
“Santa has a clear need for this information,” said Google founder Sergey Brin. “His intuition is unmatched, but his ability to sniff out naughty people will be dramatically improved now that he can search your e-mail and check whether you’ve visited any naughty web sites.”
“Do no evil,” added Google CEO Eric Schmidt, “Because otherwise we will find out, and we’ll tell Santa.”
Google also announced phase two of Google Santa, to launch in January. A new area of the Google Shopping site will enable users to sell coal in a global marketplace.
“By aggregating individual users’ stock of fossil fuels,” explained Google co-founder Larry Page, “we will enable ordinary people to participate in the global energy economy by selling their pieces of coal to their local electricity company.”
“In addition,” he added, “a modest 70% cut of the proceeds will be used to purchase carbon offset credits, making the overall operation carbon neutral, and helping me feel better about my personal Boeing 767.”
About Google Inc.
Google’s innovative web technologies log the lives of millions of people around the world every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program, which is the largest and fastest growing in the industry, provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while recording the browsing patterns of users across almost the entire World Wide Web. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and the North Pole. For more information, visit www.google.com.
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09:00
nwhyte
[Link] |
Livejournal *doesn't* screw up shock
Like a number of you, I imagine, I woke this morning to find news of the latest livejournal screwup in several places on my friends list. Users, we were told, were henceforth to be forced to specify their gender as either "male" or "female", with no allowance for those who do not want to be identified by gender, for shared accounts, for robots or for Elder Gods. Shocked by this news, I did a post of my own, and emailed one of the higher-ups at LJ to register my dissatisfaction. I got this reply: thank you for your feedback.
However, the code update that you refer to is not live and did not have any chance to go live. That was a beta release, we always push code to beta to see if everything works correctly. In many cases it does not and we either fix bugs or pull the code from the final release plan.
We were going to add a gender field to the sign up user flow, which is fine, but by mistake it became a mandatory "female/male" field for everyone. This is why this is not going live. And this is what beta releases are for, to see problems and solve them before any user faces a problem.
I would appreciate if you share this information with your friends that are also concerned. I am sorry that you were misinformed. The source of the original story was here, which is an entry on the Dreamwidth account of a former Livejournal employee who is one of the founders of Dreamwidth, which is in direct competition with Livejournal for customers. Just sayin'.
Edited to add: I also received this response from LJ's feedback team: Thank you for taking the time to contact us with your concerns. We understand that gender is not binary, and intend to respect that understanding for our users.
At this time, the code you reference is not live on the site, and will not become so in the future. We know that you, and many other users, have serious concerns about any requirement to specify gender, so we'd like to take a moment to explain events and our position further.
The intention of this code was to change the sign-up process to include a field for the selection of gender; that the code would completely disable the "Unspecified" option at the same time was deemed unacceptable. While the code in question had gone to our beta (testing) server, it had not gone to our production server, and will not do so due to this problem. Furthermore, we'd like to clarify that code posted to the changelog community is not always final, as such code must then go through the beta testing process and can often be changed before actual implementation.
Additionally, some erroneous information has been spread regarding the potential public display of the gender field. We would like to clarify that gender is not currently publicly displayed on the profile, nor anywhere else on the site, and there are no plans to change this behavior.
Regards,
LiveJournal Community Care Team See also sensible contributions from uitlander in comments below.
Tags: dreamwidth, gender and sexuality, livejournal
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04:14
nwhyte
[Link] |
The Sowerby resonance
I've been encountering a lot of fictional people called Sowerby lately. The Sowerby family - Martha, Dickon, and their unnamed mother and ten siblings - play a large role in The Secret Garden. Farther south, Mrs Sowerby is one of a number of characters living in Stockbridge played by Susan Brown in Plague of the Daleks the latest Big Finish audio in their main Doctor Who series. And farther south again, I'm also reading Trollope's Framley Parsonage, where there is a villainous Sowerby who I hope will come to a sticky end.
I don't think I've ever met anyone of that name in real life.
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00:07
nwhyte
[Link] |
Linkspam for 15-12-2009
Tags: add tags, del.icio.us, linkspam
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21:53
pw201
[Link] |
Link blog: religion, dualism, francis-collins, discovery-institute
- Substance dualism
- QualiaSoup has a new video up, a short argument against substance dualism (the idea that consciousness arises from separate kind of mental substance outside the physical world).
(tags: consciousness philosophy dualism qualia) - Theodicy III: Primo Levi versus Francis Collins
- Jerry Coyne has been reading Francis Collins's "The Language of God" as well as Levi's works on Auschwitz. Not surprisingly, he doesn't find Collins's theodicy very convincing.
(tags: theology religion jerry-coyne francis-collins) - Rowan Williams' choice | Andrew Brown | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
- Andrew Brown kicks some righteous ass: "Under Williams, the church that marries two women who love each other is to be thrown out of the Anglican Communion. The church that would jail them both for life, and would revile and persecute their defenders, stays snugly in his bosom. Not even the Archbishop's remarkable gift for obfuscation can conceal these facts forever."
(tags: homosexuality politics uganda uk religion christianity anglicanism rowan-williams) - Discovery Institute: The Mask Falls Away
- The IDers at the DI go bonkers about the Climategate emails: "A cabal of leading scientists, politicians, and media concubines have conspired to lie about global warming. The reasons are obvious: power and money. … I’m not sure that the scientific community can or will respond to this debacle in a courageous or ethical way. The ID-Darwinism debate clearly demonstrates that venality and shameless self-interest, as well as a toxic leftist-atheist ideology, runs very deep in the scientific community." I'm adding "toxic" to my standard "neo-sceptical strident fundamentalist neo-atheist" spiel.
(tags: lolxians climate global-warming intelligent-design discovery-institute)
Tags: christianity, consciousness, francis collins, intelligent design, jerry coyne, link blog, philosophy, politics, religion, rowan williams, theodicy
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15:54
mathew_rss
[Link] |
Facebook privacy settings: a checklist
http://meta.ATH0.com/2009/12/14/facebook-privacy-settings-a-checklist/ http://meta.ATH0.com/?p=4299 Facebook has recently changed its sharing permissions. A lot of people have discovered that they’ve been sharing rather more information than they intended.
Some of the permissions screens for information sharing are quite well hidden in Facebook’s array of prefence pages and tabs. There doesn’t seem to be a single place listing all the privacy-related settings pages.
I’ve attempted to assemble a list, so you can work through them one by one and make sure your Facebook sharing is set up the way you want.
- Notifications: Choose when you get e-mail or SMS from Facebook.
- Facebook Ads: Select whether ads can show your information to other people.
- Contact information: Decide who can see your various addresses and phone numbers.
- Profile information: Set who can see the miscellaneous information you put in your profile (birthday, workplaces, photos, etc.)
- Applications – friends: Facebook allows your friends to share information about you via applications. This page lets you turn that off.
- Ignored invites: Got a friend who keeps inviting you to join Scam Wars or Spamville? Add them to this list to pre-ignore their invites.
- Search: Choose whether you can be found via public search on Facebook, and/or public search engines such as Google.
- Block list: The place to name your ex-boyfriends, stalkers, and other enemies.
- Application settings: Specific settings for all applications you’ve authorized to access your Facebook account. Use the X boxes to delete ones you’re no longer using.
There’s one other setting that isn’t on a settings page. On your profile page, the box showing your friends has an icon of a pencil top right. Click that, and a menu pops up. Hidden in that menu is the checkbox that controls whether your friends list is public to the world.
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15:47
dotaturls
[Link] |
Joker.com in breach of ICANN registrar accreditation agreement.
http://www.icann.org/correspondence/burnette-to-legenhausen-30sep08-en.pdf http://dotat.at/:/8F8TM.html Joker.com in breach of ICANN registrar accreditation agreement.
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14:53
dotaturls
[Link] |
.US TLD now signed with DNSSEC.
http://mail.shinkuro.com:8100/Lists/dnssec-deployment/Message/2548.html http://dotat.at/:/JZR9B.html .US TLD now signed with DNSSEC.
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13:17
dotaturls
[Link] |
A validator for iCalendar.
http://icalvalid.cloudapp.net/ http://dotat.at/:/95NZK.html A validator for iCalendar.
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00:05
nwhyte
[Link] |
Gibbon Chapter XII
-
Ten years in which at least five emperors reign (Tacitus, Probus, Carus, Carinus and Numerian), with the usual litany of war and murder, though in fairness most of them are relatively good generals and administrators. But we finish with the ascent of Diocletian, of whom we will hear more.
Tags: del.icio.us, gibbon, linkspam
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14:47
nwhyte
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/51808624/1071362) [Link] |
December Books 4) The Jesuits, by Jonathan Wright
This is not a terribly impressive book. It is a more or less chronological account of details of history featuring the Jesuits, with no deep analysis and rather few hard facts - nothing at all to explain their internal structure, miserably brief accounts of how they were founded in 1534 and re-established in 1814. Wright is slightly better on the various political controversies that Jesuits have been involved in, though even here his analysis basically amounts to there being two sides of the story. He is good on the Jesuits' contribution to science. He is wholly inadequate on their contribution to colonialism. I can't really recommend this book.
Tags: bookblog 2009, religion
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09:52
nwhyte
[Link] |
Paul McGann on Susan and the Doctor
I found this interesting discussion between Paul McGann and one of the Big finish team (not good at recognising voices and he doesn't introduce himself) in the bonus track to "An Earthly Child", the new Big Finish play with him as the Eighth Doctor and Carole Ann Ford reprising Susan. (download extract here): ( transcript ) Funny that McGann, though obviously very aware of Hartnell's Doctor, had never before heard the Susan parts of the back story. But I think he and the other guy successfully identify why the Doctor has never since been portrayed as having a family.
Tags: doctor who, doctor who: 08
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20:46
nwhyte
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/63781025/1071362) [Link] |
AKICILJ
What is the difference, if any, between overalls and dungarees?
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17:45
mathew_rss
[Link] |
Sony BRAVIA problems with PAL playback
http://meta.ATH0.com/2009/12/12/sony-bravia-problems-with-pal-playback/ http://meta.ATH0.com/?p=4297 A couple of nights ago, I noticed my TV/DVD combination was acting up. PAL DVDs would play with a horrible irregular juddering motion. I checked broadcast TV and the PS3, and they were both fine; I checked the DVI/HDMI cable, that was fine also. I started to suspect the DVD player.
Friday, I bought a new DVD player. $44 at Fry’s Electronics. It had the same problem. Further investigation and experimentation eventually revealed that the issue was a setting on the TV.
The short summary: If you have an NTSC Sony BRAVIA TV but have no analog video sources, find the CineMotion setting in the TV setup, and make sure it is turned off, not set to auto or on. Even if you have some analog video sources, you should turn CineMotion off if you don’t use analog sources to watch movies. You don’t need it, you don’t want it, all it can ever do is mess up your signal. The long explanation follows…
Conventionally, movies are shot on film at 24 frames per second. When they are transferred to US NTSC video via a Telecine machine, the 24 frames per second must be converted to 29.97 frames per second, or 59.94 fields per second–which I’ll call 60 fields per second for the purposes of this brief discussion.
The process used is called 3:2 pulldown, because the first frame of film used to end up turning into 3 fields of video; the second frame of film ended up as 2 fields of video; the next was 3 fields again; and so on, alternating. Nowadays, frame buffers allow the 2 and 3 field allocation to be varied, so you tend to get 2:3:3:2, which results in fewer video frames whose contents are taken from two different film frames. But all pulldown options share the same fundamental defect, which is that the frames of the movie are no longer all of the same duration. This tends to make tracking shots and motion look somewhat odd.
Modern digital HDTVs don’t need pulldown. The HDTV standard, ATSC, mandates that TVs support 24 frames per second–and also 23.976 fps, which is the speed 24fps movies used to be slowed to before performing 3:2 pulldown, so as to end up with 59.94 fields per second. So an HDTV can display a 24fps movie at 24fps. If it’s a 120Hz set, it can even display movies with no split frames at all, as 24 goes evenly into 120.
Sony BRAVIA HDTVs therefore have a feature called CineMotion buried away in the setup menus. This detects incoming 3:2 pulldown video, and dynamically works out the pulldown pattern, reverses the pulldown and recombines the fields into 23.976 frames per second, buffers them, and then shows the result at exactly 23.976fps. Your movie motion looks smoother and more natural as a result.
My DVD player only pumps out a progressive signal (480p or 720p) via HDMI, so the TV never needs to do reverse pulldown. If the DVD is a movie, the MPEG-2 video file is 24fps, and the DVD player turns that into 24fps digital stream to the TV. So I have no use for this advanced CineMotion feature. It’s only applicable to analog interlaced video sources, and the only analog video source I have is the Wii–and that’s 480p via component cable and never shows 24fps movies, so it doesn’t need processing either.
Somehow, CineMotion got turned on in the setup menu–either as a default, or maybe I was playing with settings and turned it on without realizing what it was. And sadly, there’s a bug in Sony’s TV firmware: it doesn’t seem to check whether the source is interlaced before applying CineMotion post-processing. Instead, it just checks the frame rate of the decoded frames to decide whether to buffer them.
PAL video is 50 fields per second, or 25 frames per second. This seems to be close enough to 24 frames per second that it triggers the CineMotion buffering. The TV tries to take the incoming 25fps video, and show it at 23.976fps. This results in disaster; every now and again, the TV realizes it has fallen too far behind the incoming data stream, and drops an entire frame to catch up.
So that is why my UK DVDs were looking like crap. I turned the CineMotion feature off, and now everything looks good again.
So I have a second DVD player which is, strictly speaking, unnecessary. However, there’s an upside. My original player was state of the art 4 years ago, but technology has marched on. The new $44 DVD player upscales to full 1080p, the native resolution of the TV. This seems to give a better picture than upscaling to 720p and then having the TV upscale again. The fancy noise reduction and motion smoothing of the old DVD player are also unnecessary, as the new TV has even better implementations. As a final benefit, the new player has true HDMI out rather than DVI, meaning I get audio and video through the same cable, with no need to adjust timing between the two. I also notice that the new player is very light and runs cool, whereas the old one had a lot of circuitry packed in and would get hot. So, I’m keeping the new DVD player and retiring the old one.
Ah, technology, where the state of the art from 4 years ago is today’s doorstop.
Oh, and if you want a region-free DVD player, pick up a Coby DVD288 at Fry’s.
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