the frig blig

Met a gentleman the other night who adamantly insisted that global warming is a hoax. What’s more, he claimed that he had two college degrees in physics and a PhD in mathematics, and was an active participant in the scientific community, having just published his n-teenth research paper last month.

Very curious. His primary argument was that it’s impossible to accurately predict the weather, citing the Lorenz effect as proof.

Before I could muster my defense he baited me into saying I wouldn’t believe his story about how spotted owls also were a hoax — then triumphantly exclaimed “why should I bother explaining it to you when you won’t believe me anyway.”

His preemptive strike successful, he sat back smugly in his happy little room of delusion.

I spent the next few hours thinking about what’s up with him. First, I noted that he was a refugee of the USSR, and had up-close familiarity with state propoganda from the left. This made him skeptical of official explanations, sensitive to propoganda, and wary of being fooled again.

Clearly, forecasting climate change is vastly different from forecasting the weather. But he had shut me down before I could even start a rebuttal, and I suspect should I have started he had more tactical verbal weapons at his disposal.

I also noticed that he believed in god, and clearly there is less evidence for the existence of god than for the existence of global climate change. I didn’t mention this either.

His foolish beliefs made me question the veracity of his claims of education. Of course I kept mum on this too,

And so the evening ended with the Russian emigre and myself both convinced we were correct, smiling and shaking hands taking our leave.

Since I’ve already learned that the only way to burn a DVD on my mac is by using the iDVD program, I figured this is probably the way to copy a DVD disc as well. My bad, there’s nothing on any of the menus about copying discs. So my next thought was to try the Disk Utility (although the spelling of Disk vs Disc gave me a small pause… are disKs magnetic media and disCs optical media?).

Didn’t find anything about copying on the menus there either so I entered ‘copy dvd’ in mac help and lo and behold, it told me exactly how to copy a DVD using the Disk Utility! Apparently you have to create a disc image first, then burn copies from the image.

So feeling optimistic I loaded the disc into the drive, and WHAM! The Mac’s DVD player autostarts and wants to know my region. I don’t want to play the disc, only copy it. I quit DVD player, and it conveniently ejects the disc. Doh!

I tried sticking the disc into the drive again, and obediently, up pops the DVD player app. This time before closing it I look at the options preferences, and uncheck ’start playing disc when inserted’. Quit DVD player, it ejects the disc, I reload the disc and the !@#$*& DVD player app starts up again, even though it’s not playing the disc. When I quit it, of course it ejects the disc.

At this point I decide to use the linux box, where you can simply copy a disc and the OS doesn’t try to outsmart you. But before going downstairs, I look in Control Panel System Preferences and under ‘CDs and DVDs’ I see ‘when you insert a video DVD’ is set to open DVD player — I change that to ‘ignore’ and insert the disc once more and — voila! the DVD player doesn’t startup, I select it in Disk Utility and successfully burn an image! Woo-hoo! Frog 1, Mac 0.

I updated my getlnk utility (available for free download on the Bamboo Utilities page) to return the icon location and index, in addition to the executable path and args.

I recorded this video of my friend playing guitar on Thanksgiving 2007 and finally got around to editing it and posting it to youtube:

S and I went to see Dalai Lama yesterday at the football stadium with 50,000 other intrepid souls on a beautiful sunny spring afternoon. After an hour of introductions followed by introductions, he took the microphone. A few things he said included:

Men are bigger troublemakers than women.
The concept of war is outdated.
We need inner disarmament.
The more you forget about others, the more you will suffer.

In his newspaper column yesterday, Anthony Robinson discussed the age-old debate of whether more compassion is, in fact, a good thing. Or does it just encourage bad guys to feel free to do more evil without suffering consequences?

I believe that teaching and practicing compassion reduces the number of evildoers. I also believe this is not a black-and-white issue; sometimes hitting back or restraining the bully is appropriate behavior, rather than turning the other cheek. But I would feel safer in a world where compassion is the norm and fists are used as a last resort, rather than one of the first. And I find living examples of compassion inspiring and joyful.

Today I’m posting on three little unrelated topics.

algae: S was showing off his aquariums while A was preparing dinner and he pointed out that one aquarium had an algae problem. He told me that fish poop contains phosphate and algae thrive on that. But the most striking thing, to me, was that the algae in this tank was black and spiky. I’d just assumed that all algae was green and slimy. Not!

make: I’m learning to write gnome programs, and they are built via make (like most gcc programs). After adding dirent functions scandir and alphasort to my code, gcc emits errors that look just like it can’t find the function defs. Although the c source contains #include <dirent.h> and the Makefile contains CFLAGS = -I/usr/include `pkg-config --cflags libgnomeui-2.0` (and dirent.h exists in /usr/include) so what’s up? I’m not looking forward to using autoconf — which seems like overkill for a project with a single source file — but I certainly AM looking forward to figuring out what’s wrong and fixing it. Googling make and gnome builds and stuff yields results that are either for rank beginners, or advanced coders — nothing for intermediate-type programmers like me. Waaaah!

ugly code: The current (May 2008) Dr. Dobb’s Journal’s editor’s note quotes Alberto Savoia with a pithy definition: “Ugly code is code that someone else wrote.”

‘Nuff said!

Who is Elaine Chao? Current U.S. Secretary of Labor, head of the federal agency responsible for protecting workers’ rights. What is she known for? How about the following, for starters:

* Under her watch, MSHA cut roughly 100 safety officers from its ranks, even though mining activity from 2002 to 2006 increased by 9 percent nationally.
* Due to the severe cutbacks in staff needed to adequately inspect the nation’s 731 underground coal mines, in 2006 alone MSHA failed to conduct mine inspections required by law at 107 mines.
* Elaine’s MSHA did not impose fines on nearly 4,000 violations of federal mine safety and health laws, including a mine violation responsible for the death of a Kentucky miner.
* When President Bush proposed changes to a law guaranteeing workers overtime pay, Elaine became a mouthpiece for the proposal that, if passed, would strip 8 million workers of their overtime pay.
* While advocating for Bush’s new overtime rules, Elaine’s Labor Department gave businesses advice on how to avoid paying overtime by manipulating workers’ hourly wages and salary thresholds.
* Soon after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, instead of quickly trying to help displaced workers find new jobs, Elaine backed President Bush’s suspension of Davis-Bacon, a wage law that requires federal contractors to pay the local prevailing wage.
* It took the DOL an incredible seven years to help Cold War-era nuclear facility workers exposed to radiation. The DOL mismanaged the Rocky Flats compensation program and initially denied them the compensation and medical coverage they deserved.
* Elaine opposed closing the pay gap between federal and private sector workers, saying it would be “unwise.” Yet she remained silent when President Bush raised her own pay.
* When Congress investigated the West Virginia Sago Mine explosion that killed 12 people, top Labor Department officials refused to fully cooperate — acting assistant secretary for mine safety and health David G. Dye, along with the administrator of coal mine safety and health Ray McKinney both walked out of a January 2006 hearing by a Senate subcommittee, claiming they were “too busy with their duties to stay.”
* Diacetyl, a chemical flavoring added to many types of food, has been linked to the lung disease often called “popcorn lung.” Yet when public health officials and unions sent a letter to Elaine urging her to set a standard to protect workers from exposure, it went unanswered. OSHA neglected to do its job – shield workers from conditions that can cause physical harm or even kill them.
* According to the Department of Labor’s own Inspector General report, the High Growth Job Initiative at the DOL’s Employment and Training Administration awarded 87 percent of $271 million in grants without any competition, violating the agency’s own procedures in the process.
* Elaine’s office has high staff turnover – she’s gone through four public affairs chiefs, two deputy assistant secretaries, and four press secretaries since heading the Department of Labor.
* Elaine used taxpayer funds to line the walls of the Labor Department with 58 pictures of herself, embroider her name on lanyards and fleece blankets distributed at conferences, and hand out Elaine-themed gold-colored coins at public events.

That’s just a sampling of the many shameful tidbits documented on the website ShameOnElaine.org. Sorry about spreading more bad news folks, but this woman adversely affects millions of citizens’ lives. She needs to resign — yesterday.

Lemon pledge malfeasance to the stag
of the unflighted snakes of Ontario
and to the recumbent Ipswitch bit planned
one vacation under fog
invisible
with Ruth and rust bliss for all.

I bought a Mac Mini a couple of months ago and am still struggling with learning how to do the simplest things. For instance, tonight I told S “sure I’ll be happy to copy your CD of dance tunes.” And figured, let’s try to copy it using the Mac. I mean, how hard can it be?

Inserted the CD, it appears on desktop and iTunes autostarts. I select all tracks and click ‘copy’, then close iTunes (after searching every menu and not finding any items remotely resembling ‘copy CD’), I then eject the music CD and insert a blank disk which appears on the desktop as ‘Untitled CD’. When I click on it and select ‘Paste’, I get the following message:

“The items on the Clipboard cannot be pasted to this location. One or more of the items may have been deleted or are no longer available.”

Nice, very nice. I go through the entire process again, ejecting the blank, inserting the source, copying the tracks to the clipboard, ejecting the source, inserting the blank, with the same result (proof that I’m crazy).

What else to try? Oh there’s a Disk Utility program, that sounds promising. I fire it up and it has a ‘Burn’ item — cool… but when I click ‘Burn’ it wants an image. It won’t burn individual files. Hmmm…do I actually have to create an image of the source CD first? Well sure, why not, I’ve already wasted enough time…

I eject the blank CD, insert the source CD, iTunes autostarts, I select all the tracks and click ‘Copy’, and quit iTunes. Switching to ‘Finder’, I notice that ‘paste’ is greyed out in the Edit menu — telling me that whatever iTunes copied, it wasn’t to the clipboard. So I click the CD icon on the desktop and select ‘Copy Audio CD’, and check the ‘Edit’ menu in Finder. This time ‘Paste’ is enabled. OK, I eject the source CD and insert the blank. Click the ‘Untitled CD’ icon on the desktop and click ‘Paste’… and up pops the message

“The items on the Clipboard cannot be pasted to this location. One or more of the items may have been deleted or are no longer available.”

Hmm… didn’t I figure out I needed to create an image that I can burn? How do I create an image from the source CD? I eject the blank and reinsert the source CD; iTunes dutifully starts, I select all tracks and Copy just for good measure before closing iTunes. Now I’m looking at the menu of the ‘Audio CD’ desktop icon and notice the item called ‘Duplicate’. Is this the answer to my quest? I take a breath and click it, and immediately a folder is created on the desktop labelled ‘Audio CD’ and a Copy dialog pops up, with status of copying the items. Well at least it’s copying something to somewhere — seems like progress. Hopefully when it’s done I can copy the folder contents to the blank CD. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of “Frog learns to use a Mac” right after these messages…

Allright, the copy completed, I ejected the source disk and inserted the blank disk and it appears on the desktop and I open the ‘Audio CD’ folder and select all items and click Copy and click on the ‘Untitled CD’ icon and click Paste and… nothing happens.

Just for giggles I click ‘Open’ on the ‘Untitled CD’ icon and am amazed — all 19 files appear in a Finder window, and there’s even a ‘Burn’ button on the upper right corner! Yes! I click the ‘Burn’ button, and after an ‘are you sure?’ dialog, the Mac displays the following message:

“Untitled CD” is too large to fit on the disc. Remove some files and try again.

This is weird since the files were just copied from another CD which originated from the same stack that this one came from. It seems unlikely that the files got bigger just by being copied from the CD to the desktop folder. What’s going on here?

Well the short solution is, go downstairs and copy the darn CD using my linux laptop. But I’ll give the Mac one last try. I click on the ‘Audio CD’ folder icon and open it in Finder, then see on the Finder menu the item ‘Burn ‘Audio CD’ to disc’ — cool. I click it, and the ‘Burn Disc’ dialog appears stating “This disc will be burned with the contents of ‘Audio CD’. You need a disc with a capacity of at least 780.5 MB.”

Well shiver me timbers matey — both of these CDs are 700 MB Verbatim brand disks from the same spindle. Why does Mac want to make the copy bigger than the source?

OK downstairs to the linux box. Wasted too much time already. Stupid Mac.