Robot Monkeys

I have this fascination with Scott Banister. “Fascination” is too strong of a word for it, so I guess I should say “reoccurring curiosity” about Scott Banister.

I knew Scott Banister. Ryan introduced me to him early freshman year of college. He’s smart. He was big in the ACM, and founded the WebMonkeys sig there. Sophomore year he apparently quit bathing, but that’s something else.

Freshman or sophomore year he created Submit-It, a perl script and really crappy web form that submitted a url to every search engine known at the time. Pretty much Yahoo, Excite, and Altavista. (This was back in 1994 or 1995.)

Either the middle or the end of his sophomore year he dropped out and moved to The Valley.

He sold Submit-It to Link Exchange. Probably made a ton of cash.

He then went on to create Iron Port, take up bathing, but not shaving or cutting his hair. (I’m a hypocrite I know.)

He sold that to Cisco for $830 million in 2007.

I guess in a sense I compare myself to him. I don’t know why. Our lives are incredibly different, but I guess since I met him at 18, and he disappeared from my daily life at 19, it’s a bit odd, but it is what it is. Now in my defense, I don’t go google stalking him, it’s just that his name shows up in news articles I read. *sigh*

So what’s Scott Banister up to now?

Well he’s married to a girl named “Cyan,” but that’s not very interesting. So I’ll just say, in a word: Porn.

So CNN publishes an article about the Great Tomato Scare of 2008 (If anyone wants to use that, you owe me a buck.), and the headline completely misrepresents the article. The headline: “Health Officials Question Whether Tomatoes Behind Outbreak“. And what’s the quote from the story hightlights?
“FDA: ‘There is a strong epidemiological association with tomatoes.’” So where’s the source of the fear?

“Produce investigations are very difficult, because a lot of times, vegetables are eaten all together,” said Dr. Patricia Griffin, chief of the Enteric Diseases Epidemiology Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. That makes it hard to trace back any one item to a source of contamination, she added. “We continue to keep an open mind about the possible source of this outbreak, as does FDA.”

Dr. David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods at the Food and Drug Administration, agreed. “There is a strong epidemiological association with tomatoes,” but the agency is also “looking into other ingredients,” he said.

So you have the scientists basically saying, “While we can’t be 100% sure it’s not from the tomatoes, we really really think it is.” Which of course means the take away is, “Scientists Dumbfounded!”

Now Occam’s Razor and Hanlon’s Razor says that I should attribute this to pure laziness, and that’s probably true. After all, the one story from Billy’s journalism classes is the time the TA or prof tried to explain the concept of a quorum using the example of “one more after the half.” Apparently this was too much more most of the students who would calculate the number required for a quorum as simply half, or one less than half. At least one proclaiming, “We’re not math majors!”

The future of American journalism at its finest.

However, I can’t help but think that this CNN headline is more indicative of American attitudes towards science. Nothing is known for certain, so nothing is known, and therefore everything is equally likely.
I believe this attitude comes from the poor state of math and science education in this country, and the need for “fair and balanced” coverage.

So I’m standing in this lounge thing at MSR when something outside catches my eye. So I casually stroll over to the window and what do I see?

I was wrong.

t-jokore(a)microsoft.com

HR woman: “So what’s Microsoft’s reputation with your friends.”
*pause*
Me: “It’s evil.”
Everyone: “Yeah. Evil.”

The most interesting, a slightly disturbing part of this exchange was that the expected, “We’re not really evil…” line never came. The “evil” label just sat there.

Mordor Castle indeed.

After 5 years of Iraq and 7 years on Afghanistan, the war is played out.

So why am I supposed to take the MSM seriously again?

Obama supports immunity for the telcoms that broke the law in GWB’s illegal wiretapping. Why? Because when the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.

Hope for change indeed.

I want nice RSS reader. I’ve wanted one for a while now. I even made one. It’s pretty cool, for being a ticker. Only there’s one catch. It’s a GNOME applet.

Fuck.

You can’t install a GNOME applet locally. You have to install it in /usr, which makes it absolutely useless unless you’re the sysadmin. God damn it. There’s just no good reason to do that. That’s just laziness. Unix has always been (mostly) agnostic, and then here comes GNOME botching things up as usual.

I really don’t want to have to use something Tickershock, since I already have something better. Well maybe I’ll give in.

Linux, can still blow me

For years, nay decades, I’ve been wondering which was more environmentally friendly, paper towels or hand driers. I believe I first became aware of the modern day moral conundrum when I was in a bathroom that had both, and both had signs indicating that they were the obvious alternative.

Slate’s Lantern has the answer. Blow Dryers… maybe.

Apparently Salon did this a while back, as did Excel, makers of the very effective, but insanely loud Xcelerator (”Feel the Power”). (I thought I had a post for years ago describing my first experience with one in the SIU Student Center, and how I could watch my skin billow under its jets exhaust, but alas, I can’t find it.)

Calculating the environmental impact is difficult given the variance in the number of towels used and the duration of the blowing, the efficiency of the blower, and the along with the source of the electricity. The environmental impact of the towels comes from transporting and manufacturing them, since none get recycled, and deforestation is a nonissue due to them coming from industrial tree farms. Basically, using two paper towels is about the same as one blast from an old dryer. If a new dryer is used, then the dryer wins hands down (just hopefully not your pants).

U.S. Major Gen. Antonio Taguba (Ret.):

There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account.

Sorry Tony. There’s no question of that either. They won’t be.

What should happen is that the International Criminal Court should issue an arrest warrant, and then the principles: George W, Cheney, Rummy, John Yoo, Scooter Libby, and the whole lot, should be arrested as soon as they step off the plane in a foreign country. Hell, Interpol should take a page out of their playbook and perform an “extraordinary rendition” and arrest them here.

Hell! Why the hell isn’t the Berkley city council ordering the Berkeley PD to arrest John Yoo at his office at 890 Simon Hall? I’ll tell you why. Because unlike the fucking Berkeley Nuclear Free Zone, this would actually achieve something, and hippies aren’t about achieving real change. They’re all about “sending messages” and forming drum circles and raging against the war machine and what not. Just not achieving real change.