I’ve begun, and deleted, my varying comments about this about half a dozen times so far.  I’m giving up.  Here it is:

The [Organization of the Islamic Conference] resolution [proposed in the UN] says “Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism” and calls on U.N. member states “to combat defamation of religions and incitement to religious hatred in general…”  — Reuters

I don’t even know.  This just makes me want to cry.  If the leadership of fifty-six countries can parse that paragraph and interpret the logic as A→B→C, let alone advocate for it, what possible chance is there going to ever be for peace worldwide?

I just got an email — two, actually — with the text “Hossein has sent you a cold drink.  To accept this gift please click the following link.”

Anyone else get this?  Anyone know what is going on?

I wouldn’t suggest clicking.  It could just be spam, or it could link to disturbing or illegal media, or viruses or other malware, or pages that make you have to externally terminate your whole browser because the page has locked you in a loop.

So, I wouldn’t click it.  But if you have, please let me know what the hell it is.  If it’s a page that makes Bleinheim’s OLD #3 HOT pour out a USB cable, I might reconsider.  I think chilled ginger ale coming out of my computer would be awesome.

Two things from The World — a radio program co-produced by PRI, the BBC, and the not-to-be-trifled with WGBH Boston, in a segment about new EU rules for pesticides:

First, an organic farmer in France (?) saying that she considered pesticides to be “basically poison”.

Uh, yeah.  They are pesticides.  For killing pests.  Animals.  Poisoning animals.  Hello?

And, more fun — a conventional farmer from the environs of Leeds, who claimed (this will be a fairly close paraphrase)

Broccoli, cauliflower, onions, carrots, and numerous other crops simply could not be grown in England without the use of pesticides.  We would be unable to provide the quality, healthy produce at the prices British customers currently enjoy without these chemicals.

Let’s take that one slowly, starting in the middle.  Quality?  OK, I’m with you.  The loss from bug-eaten organic produce can be rather large, and providing the partially-consumed produce to grocers (rather than composting it) would result in lower quality.  Low-priced?  Definitely with you.  Loss = lower output = higher prices.  This is your argument here.  But healthy (presumably meaning healthful)?  Come on.  You are telling me, albeit in a sound bite, that not spraying vegetables with pesticides would result in more toxic food?

Let’s go back to the beginning.  One could not grow brassicae, allia, and — um — carrots (?) in England without pesticides?  Pretty sure Queen Elizabeth I ate those products.  Pretty damn sure they weren’t imported from Portugal.

Organic farming, on a global scale, may not make sense.  I’ve read arguments on both sides.  Some argue that output, with current methods, could not produce the amount of food currently generated, which is in turn not enough to feed the world.  Others pounce on this later claim, and say that if food production was sustainable and local, rather than shipping things all over the world, the population of could be fed (no, not going to chase down links.)  But, in a theme that arises plentifully on this blog, you’ve got to fight fair.  Pesticides are poisons.  Carrots can be grown in England without chemicals.  Your bottom line will be impacted.  Let’s start there.

I live in a suburb of Los Angeles, California, USA.  Unfortunately, Garmin’s GPS receivers are designed for a parallel-universe-version of this city called Los-Angeles-With-No-Red-Lights.  This is why their GPS receivers have me get off the 60 freeway in Pico Rivera when I’m going to San Gabriel, and why my journey through the surface streets of downtown-but-not-so-beautiful-no-matter-what-Leno-says Burbank this afternoon, ostensibly to avoid a traffic jam, ended up taking six minutes longer than estimated.  I understand not finding optimal solutions, even to the point of my ignoring directions and taking time off the estimated arrival — TSP is, of course, NP-complete — but not weighting surface streets with delays from traffic lights (or woefully underestimating, which equates to the same thing)?  Really inexcusable.

Maybe our red lights just suck here.

Readers will know I am no friend of the Republicans (this as one of a billion possible links) — and though some attentive reader is going to claim that this is another instance of my thinking that a prominent black man is full of shit, Andrew Breitbart was fucking railroaded on Bill Maher by Michael Eric Dyson, the studio audience, and (to a somewhat lesser degree) by Maher himself.

Did anyone see this bullshit?

Breitbart confronted Maher by asking him to provide references when he accused Rush Limbaugh of racism.  This is not impossible to do, and Dyson did provide some (one of which was even relevant) — but Maher?  He passed the buck, asking if Dyson “wanted to take” that one.  Back up your own fucking claims, man.

Dyson (and, look, I’d say this in a moment about Dershowitz, Paul Kurtz, or any number of other people — this is not a black thing) indeed did try to steamroller Breitbart with ten dollar words (yes, I knew them all, and I would still be a dick if I spoke like that in an argument, which I expect I’ve done); insinuations of speaking in “code words” when it was very clear (to me) that Dyson was doing this very thing; and self-conscious affectation of urban African-American diction at precisely the points one would choose if one were suggesting that Breitbart was himself a racist.

Breitbart was completely right that Social Security is a “box of magic” that needs to be confronted.  Breitbart was completely right that it is disingenuous — he didn’t use these words, I’m speaking for him now — to hold up Obama as a paragon of virtue and call Clarence Thomas a “ventriloquist’s dummy” (yes, Dyson said that — actually, he said “a ventriloquist”, but I think I got what he meant.)  Breitbart was off the map when he laid into “black studies” professors and “post-structuralist” intellectuals, and in a number of other places, but look — ok, don’t look.  I have no idea who is going to jump on this thread, or what accusations they are going to make.  But I will stand to my last breath demanding that someone fights fairly.  What I’m saying:

1. If you make an accusation and you cannot cite references, you are a dick.
2. If you respond to someone’s point, delivered in simple language, by laying in with long words and demanding the other person “let [you] finish” when you did not allot them the same courtesy, you are a dick.
3. If you continue to rework your argument when challeneged, and then claim that that’s what you’ve been saying all along when it is completely clear that you have been doing nothing of the sort, you are a dick.
4. And, yes, I’m a dick.

Oh, and by the way: what the hell is a “talking eTrade baby”?

Eliza Dushku in Maxim.

My web host is going to hate me, as that will be another 20GB/mo transfer right there.

But download.  I’ll wait.

OK, now watch.

OK, you’ve either watched or you are not all that into women.  Great.

Now watch again.

I know I’m supposed to be all grunge-’n'-shit, but there is something profoundly refreshing about one of the hottest people on the planet admitting that she knows she’s hot.  Eddie Vedder saying he doesn’t deserve a Grammy is all good, but seriously.  Come on.  This is Eliza Dushku in lingerie.

During the campaign, BBC anchors were pronouncing candidate Obama’s name as “barrack OH-bahmah”.  Fun.  They’ve fixed this.  They now pronounce his name as “Buh-RACK a bomber”.  Yes, not “RAHCK”, “RACK”.  In RP, foreign words, presumably to sound more foreign, have a phonemes pronounced with North American short a — as in Rack.  In educated NA pronunciation, presumably to sound more foreign, foreign words are pronounced with ahs — as in Rock.  Listen to the BBC and NPR and compare the pronunciations of Iraq.

Of course, in RP, “Obama” does not sound like “a bomber”.  That would be silly.  To say “Obama”, you end it with an “r” sound.  To say “a bomber”, you end it with an “a” sound.  Of course.  It is only we silly North Americans (and only in something like “NA RP”) who pronounce present rs and don’t pronounce absent rs. Of course.

I hope my trans-Atlantic colleagues will forgive me when I note that anglophilia will get you so far, then it will get you killed

OK, so, fine, I joined Facebook, after I said I wouldn’t.  It took 25 minutes, the bulk of it taken up by importing contacts.

It appears to be a critical mass thing: it becomes more and more useful as the number of people using it goes up.  Which is fine, but I still feel rather ridiculous at the site — a feeling that should be quickly dispelled should I reconnect with long-lost friends.

Most of the site is designed, in my opinion, fairly well.  But I am completely baffled by something.  When I search in their search field, I get a list of all people matching my search.  How do I see their profiles?  I am really good at this stuff, and I am completely stymied.  I can send friend requests, compose messages, or see their friends.  I can find their profiles through Google.  But surely there is a way to do it natively.  If I haven’t seen the person in 20 years, I might not recognize him or her from a photo.

Beardy has a fascinating graph.  The responses are even more rad.

Stay tuned for a link to the MeFi question I am working on composing, after I make sure I understand a nonzero amount of this problem.  Note: a math degree does nothing to help with all of this.

Fun stuff!  Clannish message boards.  What is this, 1995?  WTF?

I will note with pride that the culture on Ubuntu forums is breathtakingly welcoming, even to the most inane requests in broken English.

OK, so, the quotes in the upper-right (of the real site).  I have some fun with them.  Some are trolls, some are funny; some are very obscure, a few are impenetrably in-jokey; some other inclusion criteria to make a total of three clauses.  So, a few things:

1.  I have previously beseeched thee, dear readers, for advice on how to make it clear that one can hover a mouse cursor over the quote and find the source, as I loathe my current solution — graphically, technologically, and philosophically.  I haven’t offered the standard mcgees.org prize of a banana through the U.S. mail yet, though, so, consider it offered.

2.  I have thought about italicizing a line, putting it in small type, and adding it just to the posts in the RSS feed, so that the feed-enabled (and -inclined) will be blessed with the great wisdom and wit that is the quote.

3.  I have ceremonially deleted “One nation, under surveillance” from the quote rotator in honor of Obama’s election.  Like de-targeting ICBMs from Russian cities, this is symbolic, and would take mere seconds to undo, so consider that a warning, administration!

4.  That was a joke.

5.  Also, I’ve seen “One nation, under surveillance” numerous places, including bumper stickers, so, even though I came up with it independently, it’s just not cool any more.

6.  I thought about replacing it with a quote from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles — namely, “I’m not supposed to kill you, but you can’t stay here” — but thought that was probably a bad idea for a number of reasons.

7.  There is only one page on the site that is hand-coded to hide the quote — namely, the big hamster one — because of the sheer number of nine to 11-year-old girls who find the page.  No one has approached me yet about advertising on the page, which is surprising, as it gets more traffic than [joke deleted].

This was forwarded to me by someone who simply thought I would find it interesting, not so I could vote.  I did find it interesting:

Will NBC be surprised?
Here’s your chance to let the media know where the people stand on
our faith in God, as a nation.
NBC is taking a poll on “In God We Trust” to stay on our American
currency.
Please send this to every Christian you know so they can vote on
this important subject.
Please do it right away, before NBC takes this off the web page.
Poll is still open so you can vote.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10103521/

This is not sent for discussion, if you agree forward it, if you don’t, delete it.

By me forwarding it, you know how I feel.
I’ll bet this was a surprise to NBC.

I want you to savor the deliciousness of this for a moment.  “Please send this to every Christian you know,” it says.  “This is not sent for discussion, if you agree forward it, if you don’t, delete it.”  In other words, “Please help self-select NBC’s sample.”

Yes, straw men and fish in barrels, not all religionists are like this, etc.  Not my main point.  My main point is: please use this to become more wary of online polls of any kind.  There is probably even a law we could devise, something along the lines of “The accuracy of an online poll varies inversely w.r.t. its emotional weight.”  Yes, gotta say emotional; it’s not like there’s anything more rigorous going on.  “vi vs. emacs” is not called a religious argument for no reason.

I am left to wonder how many times the charming bigot who sent this originally voted herself.

Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, it looks like we’ve lost some irregular conjugations of “to thrive”.  Whereas I would say “The economy throve on foo, and has thriven on bar ever since”, educated people, including plenty of analysts on NPR, are saying “The economy thrived on foo, and has thrived on bar ever since.”

Linguists are well past being prescriptive, and are now descriptive, grammarians, bestselling books be damned.  And many of my word choices are affectations, or at least began as such — using constructions such as these are they more or less self-consciously.  But this isn’t one of those.  It’s not even a wincer, like “heighth” is.  It is simply as natively jarring to my ear as “He goed to the store one day, and has goed every day since.”  OK, so, fine, do away with irregular verbs — it makes English far easier for learners, and who gives a whit about Old Norse — but, real question, when did we lose the past conjugation and past participle of to thrive, if indeed we have?

Paging Jordon.

“Unconsumption is a word used to describe everything that happens after an act of acquisition.”

Would it be conspicuous concern — signaling — to mention that I intend to buy nothing new this year (save consumables, which I’m also trying to reduce)?  I’ll gamble on that not being the case, wager that the net positive effect for the planet, by publicizing this idea, will be significantly higher than the possible increase in esteem by readers.

(via Richard Eriksson)

Niall and I were waiting at my mother’s house for carpet cleaners to arrive.  The van arrived, was parked in the driveway, and the tech stretched a hose through the front door.

N:  Why is there a big hose?

J:  It’s actually an elephant in the driveway with a really long trunk.

N:  (eyes as big as saucers:) I can’t wait to see it!

J:  Sorry Niall, I was joking.  Did you know I was joking?

N:  No.

J:  I’m sorry.

N:  That’s OK, it was funny.

OK, so I goofed up significantly in my upgrade of WordPress — and my backup was corrupted, to boot.  So, sigh.  I lost some posts.  My own foolishness, and your benefit.

If you can read this, everything is likely working.  If you don’t, please let me know.  Yes, I’ve used that joke before.