“During my lifetime, there has been a sea change in the way that politically active Americans view their relationship with government.”
- Studs Terkel

Earlier this month, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the White House agreed to allow the executive branch to conduct dragnet interceptions of the electronic communications of people in the United States. They also agreed to “immunize” American telephone companies from lawsuits charging that after 9/11 some companies collaborated with the government to violate the Constitution and existing federal law. I am a plaintiff in one of those lawsuits, and I hope Congress thinks carefully before denying me, and millions of other Americans, our day in court.

- Studs Terkel @ The New York Times: link.

Via Kevin’s Security Scrapbook: link.

Thought for today:

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

- Plato: link.

Plato @ Wikipedia.

“It’s neat, but how does the TV station know I turned this knob?”
- Pong early adopters

“It really was a world-changing event,” recalls Bushnell. “I can remember people saying, ‘It’s neat, but how does the TV station know I turned this knob?’ Their whole metric was TV signals came from TV stations. With Pong, it came from the game and that was a real epiphany. They didn’t understand how it was done. It was the staging for the personal-computer revolution to come.”

- Nolan Bushnell, inventor of Pong: link.

See also Pong @ Wikipedia.

Thought for today:

When you have the intuition that there is something which is there, but out of the reach of your physical world, art and religion are the only means to get to it.

- Guillermo Del Toro: link

Observations by Morrow Mayo on the city of Los Angeles

Los Angeles, it should be understood, is not a mere city. On the
contrary, it is, and has been since 1888, a commodity; something to be
advertised and sold to the people of the United States like
automobiles, cigarettes and mouth wash.

- Morrow Mayo: Link.

And:

Here is an artificial city which has been pumped up under forced
draught, inflated like a balloon, stuffed with rural humanity like a
goose with corn…endeavoring to eat up this too rapid avalanche of
anthropoids, the sunshine metropolis heaves and strains, sweats and
becomes pop-eyed, like a young boa constrictor trying to swallow a
goat. It has never imparted an urban character to its incoming
population for the simple reason that it has never had any character to
impart. On the other hand, the place has the manners, culture and
general outlook of a huge country village.

- Morrow Mayo: Link.

Los Angeles by Morrow Mayo @ Amazon.com: link.

1933 Gonzo History

In his prescient 1933 gonzo history, Los Angeles, Morrow Mayo traced L.A.’s birth back to cleared sagebrush and wild mustard, a barren swatch of acreage “that resembled a sort of glorified unoccupied tennis-court in the desert, surrounded by empty polo-fields.”

- Josh Kun, “L.A. Boogie”: Link.

The Owens Valley Aqueduct

In W. A. Chalfant’s book, The Story of Inyo, Morrow Mayo (a Los Angeles reporter) wrote: “Los Angeles gets its water by reason of one of the costliest, crookedest, most unscrupulous deals ever perpetrated, plus one of the greatest pieces of engineering folly ever heard of. Owens Valley is there for anybody to see. The city of Los Angeles moved through this valley like a devastating plague. It was ruthless, stupid, cruel and crooked. It stole the waters of the Owens River. It drove the people of Owens Valley from their home, a home which they had built from the desert. For no sound reason, for no sane reason, it destroyed a helpless agricultural section and a dozen towns. It was an obscene enterprise from the beginning to end.”

- Owens Valley Herald: link.

See also California water wars.

Morrow Mayo’s influence on others

When asked to name the writer on Southern California who had the greatest
influence in shaping my values, I pass over the more prominent names: John
Caughey, Carey McWilliams, Kevin Starr and others. I grew up in the pre-WWII
Southland, and my literary hero was the latter-day muckraker, Morrow Mayo. I
was thirteen when I read his powerful environmental essay, “To See it Fall,” a
now forgotten plea for preservation of the giant Sequoias. Shortly after that
I read his critical volume “Los Angeles,” and I became forever a critic of the
city’s destruction of Owens Valley.

- Ralph E. Shaffen, An Open Letter to “Environmentalist” Mary Nichols and Times Publisher Jeffrey Johnson: link.

“Talking about a software development schedule more than a year out is like talking about where we go after we die. Everyone has some idea where we’ll end up, but those ideas differ wildly, and there’s a lack of solid evidence to support any of them.” - Kyle Wilson

There’s not really any good way to measure the complexity or scale of a piece of software …. Lines of code is a lousy metric, but it’s the only one we’ve got …. The Feynman report on the Challenger disaster says the shuttle was running 250,000 lines of code. An F-22 fighter jet runs 1.7 million lines of code. What does this tell us about the relative complexity of these programs? Not a whole lot.

I believe that the following statement is an axiom of software development:

It is impossible, by examining any significant piece of completed code, to determine within a factor of two how many man-hours it took to produce that code.

And the corollary:

If you can’t tell how long a piece of code would take when you have the finished product available, what chance do you think you have before the first line of code is written?

Talking about a software development schedule more than a year out is like talking about where we go after we die. Everyone has some idea where we’ll end up, but those ideas differ wildly, and there’s a lack of solid evidence to support any of them.

- Kyle Wilson: August 19, 2007: GameArchitect.net: Link.

Via Dave’s Picks: Link.

I Am an Op-Ed Columnist (And So Can You!)
by Stephen Colbert

Look at the moral guidance I offer. On faith: “After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up.” On gender: “The sooner we accept the basic differences between men and women, the sooner we can stop arguing about it and start having sex.” On race: “While skin and race are often synonymous, skin cleansing is good, race cleansing is bad.” On the elderly: “They look like lizards.”

Our nation is at a Fork in the Road. Some say we should go Left; some say go Right. I say, “Doesn’t this thing have a reverse gear?” Let’s back this country up to a time before there were forks in the road — or even roads. Or forks, for that matter. I want to return to a simpler America where we ate our meat off the end of a sharpened stick.

Let me regurgitate: I know why you want me to run, and I hear your clamor. I share Americans’ nostalgia for an era when you not only could tell a man by the cut of his jib, but the jib industry hadn’t yet fled to Guangdong. And I don’t intend to tease you for weeks the way Newt Gingrich did, saying that if his supporters raised $30 million, he would run for president. I would run for 15 million. Cash.

Nevertheless, I am not ready to announce yet — even though it’s clear that the voters are desperate for a white, male, middle-aged, Jesus-trumpeting alternative.

- Stephen Colbert @ New York Times: Link.

Via Armchair Generalist: Link.

Thought for today:

Work hard; increase production; prevent accidents, and be happy.

- THX 1138: Link.

Internet-based democracy in Australia

Senator On-Line is not aligned to any other political party… it is neither Liberal nor Labor.

Senator On-Line (‘SOL’) is a truly democratic party which will allow everyone on the Australian Electoral roll who has access to the internet to vote on every Bill put to Parliament and have its Senators vote in accordance with a clear majority view.

We will be running candidates for the upcoming federal Upper House (Senate) elections.

When a SOL senator is elected a web site will be developed which will provide:

* Accurate information and balanced argument on each Bill and important issues
* The vast majority of those registered on the Australian Electoral roll the chance to have their say by voting on bills and issues facing our country
* A tally of all votes which will then count in Parliament

Each person on the Australian Electoral roll will be entitled to one vote and only be allowed to vote once on each bill or issue.

SOL senators will have committed in writing to voting in line with the clear majority view of the SOL on-line voters.

- Senator On-Line: Link.

Via SlashDot: Link.

New collective aims to get activist media out on the streets

We will be producing a CD each week, the content of which is decided by infograffiti users; It will have video/documentary and entertainment on it. You download the CD image, burn it to CD, then leave it in your city for people to find. That way we sidestep the mainstream media and get a forward thinking message out to people who would never normally see this material. Register now, Submit Content, and GET VOTING!

- Infograffiti: Link.

Via Big Shiny Thing: Link.

Thought for today:

Do not commit your poems to pages alone, sing them I pray you.

- Virgil (70-19 BC): Link.

Virgil @ Wikipedia: Link.

Via Boing Boing: “Interesting story about the Gulfstream II jet filled with 3.7 tons of cocaine that crashed in the Yucatan a couple of weeks ago. According to the Austin American Statesman, this plane has previously flown to Guantanamo Bay, which has a highly restricted airspace. Mad Cow Morning News visited the owners of the plane, ‘Donna Blue Aircraft Inc’ of Coconut Beach FL., and discovered that it’s an “empty office suite with a blank sign out front.”"

Some news reports have linked the plane to the transport of terrorist suspects to the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but those reports cite logs that indicate only that the plane flew twice between Washington and Guantánamo and once between Oxford, Conn., and Guantánamo.

No terrorist suspects are known to have been transferred to Guantánamo directly from the United States.

The jet, with the tail number N987SA, changed hands twice in recent weeks. But how it ended up in the hands of suspected drug traffickers remains a mystery.

The Mexican attorney general’s office said the blue and white Gulfstream II crashed Monday in a remote jungle area on the Yucatán Peninsula. Authorities seized 132 bags of cocaine weighing four tons.

- Daniel Hopsicker, Oct 08, 2007: Link.

USA Today: “Plane crash in Mexico involved Colombian cocaine”: Link.

Fort Worth Star Telegram: “Crashed plane traced to drug kingpin”: Link.

Have you ever wondered how software projects result in failure?

This helpful flowchart explains the process:

Via Worse Than Failure.

Thought for today:

Whate’ers begun in anger ends in shame.

- Benjamin Franklin: Link.

“$197m coming Jamaica’s way [from China]”

So much for the Monroe Doctrine:

Caribbean economies are expected to swell from billions in foreign direct investment from China in the next three years, as the world’s fourth largest economy makes good on its commitment to improve economic ties with the region.

… China has also committed itself to improving trade conditions with the region and strengthening its capacity. Two thousand Caribbean government officials and technical professionals will be trained over the three-year period, while scholarships will be made available for Caribbean nationals to study in China. Some 600 persons have already been trained.

… Responding to the Vice Premier’s announcement, Barbados Deputy Prime Minister Mia Motley hailed China for its continued support of the region, noting that its assistance was welcomed as struggling Caribbean states would be forced to open themselves for free trade by 2008.

Jamaica Gleaner News: September 10, 2007