This is an essay from The Culture We Deserve, by Jacques Barzun.#

In this essay, Jacques tackles the assumption that there can never be too much Art, and that there was once a Golden Age of Art Financing.#

This year, in any year, the budgets of the federal and state agencies that support the arts are to be cut again. Meanwhile, costs in the arts are going up-rent, utilities, printing, and various incidental expenses. Yet one continues to read and hear of one more dance group being formed, yet another chamber orchestra making its debut, newborn theatre companies striving to lure audiences, festivals and exhibits being organized. Each new enterprise is self-assured of prestige, confident of deserving support, and hungry for subsidy from public and private funds.

This disparity between shrinking means and growing supply points to attitudes and assumptions about art that have not been examined for a long time. The most common assumption is that there cannot be too much art, and hence that the public has an obligation to support whatever qualifies under that name. If private funds fall short, let public money make up the difference. But since public money is not an elastic substance, some rethinking is in order, aimed at developing new standards of judgment and response. [pg. 120]

It is important to note that Jacques writes "has not been examined in a long time," not "has never been examined."#

Already in 1840, Balzac noted with dismay that there were two thousand painters in Paris. Degas, fifty years later, said: "we must discourage the arts." But the ever enlarging display of art cannot, of course, be cut or held back. We can pay farmers not to grow crops, but we cannot pay artists to stop making art. Yet something must be done. To lead people on when there is no chance they will ever fulfill their desire is immoral. And our training schools, art councils, endowments, and foundations are doing just that. They flatter the hope and belief that every good work and worker will be recognized and subsidized. When no such thing happens, anger and distress naturally follow.

Nor does the artist's anger refer solely to money. Government grants are awarded by persons (often themselves artists) who assume the role of bureaucrat. Their role cuts them off from the community of applicants. Subsidy, even by a private foundation, is an official act, and on this subject the French experience of three hundred years is conclusive. In France, the academic imitators got the commissions and subsidies; those who produced the works we admire today had to survive as best they could. The term official art means art that is competent and safe. As John Sloan said in urging government support: "Then we'll know who our enemy is." [pgs. 124-125]

The final pages of this essay are elegant in their expression of Jacques' opinion.#

These suggestions and possibilities have nothing to do with trying to reduce the role of government in society. Nor do they relate to money alone, or artistic ambition alone. When I urge this new soberness, I am thinking of high culture as whole and our relation to it. In the competition for cash, punctuated by elegant ballyhoo, in the overabundance of the offering and the fuss about it in print and on the airwaves, something has happened to the artistic experience itself. Its quality has been lowered by plethora. Great works too often seen or performed, too readily available in bits and pieces, become articles of consumption instead of objects of contemplation. They lose force and depth by being too familiar through too frequent or too hurried use. When I hear of someone's proudly "spending the day at the museum," I wonder at the effect: the intake is surely akin to that of an alcoholic. Music likewise is anesthetic when big does-symphony after symphony, opera on top of opera-are administered without respite. We should remember the Greeks' practice of exposing themselves to one tragic trilogy or one comedy on but a single day each year. High art is meant for rare festivals, where anticipation is followed by exhilaration and the aftermath is meditation and recollection in tranquillity. The glut has made us into gluttons, who gorge and do not digest. [pg. 127]

This is an essay from The Culture We Deserve, by Jacques Barzun.#

This essay talks about the Humanities, what they are, where they've been, and what happened to them. A central theme is the destruction of the original intent of universities and the near identicalness of vocational schools and colleges.#

My favourite part of the essay is when Jacques writes about "buffs" and the problem they represent.#

A more real danger than the imagined elite is our present combination of specialist and half-baked humanist education. The danger is that we shall become a nation of pedants. I use the word literally and democratically to refer to the millions of people who are moved by a certain kind of passion in their pastimes as well as in the vocations. In both parts of their lives this passion comes out in shoptalk. I have in mind the bird watchers and nature lovers; the young people who collect records and follow the lives of pop singers and movie stars; I mean the sort of knowledge posses by "buffs" and "fans" of all species -the baseball addicts and opera goers, the devotees of railroad trains and the collectors of objects, from first editions to netsuke.

They are pedants not just because they know and recite an enormous quantity of facts-if a school required them to learn as much they would scream against the tyranny. It is not the extent of their information that appalls; it is the absence of any reflection upon it, any sense of relation between it and them and the world. Nothing is brought in from outside to contrast or comparison; no perspective is gained from the top of their monstrous factual pile; no generalities emerge to lighten the sameness of their endeavor. Their hoard of learning is barren money-it bears no interest, because in the strictest sense it is not put to use. One might argue that this knowledge of facts is put to use when the time comes to buy more rare books or silver plate or postage stamps. But that is not using knowledge to adorn life and distill wisdom, as all knowledge can be made to do when it is held and used humanistically.

I do not offer these remarks as an outside who is scornful. I love baseball, opera, railroad trains, and crime stories, and I know something about them. But I am dismayed that others, who know much more, seem unable to do anything with it except foregather with their kind to match items of information. [pg. 118-119]

This is a common trend in Jacques' writing and in my mind: the desire and need for themes and general connections. Nothing can profitably exist inside a vacuum without any relation to anything else. More truthfully, nothing does exist in that manner, and any attempt to think about it that way will leave the thinker hungry for more substance. Our lives and ideas, like art, are form perfectly fused into function and content. Just like we cannot isolate components of painting or face and show how that piece makes it beautiful, one cannot truly enjoy and benefit from study without allowing oneself to connect it to the greater universe of previously studied subjects.#

This is an essay from The Culture We Deserve, by Jacques Barzun.#

Jacques will tackle the overuse and misuse of the word, "Relativism," in this essay...#

For several decades the world Relativism has served to explain whatever the user found morally reprehensible in the life around him. The term, both scapegoat and insult, has all the properties of a thought-cliche of the learned-sounding kind. It is in fact a gross perversion of a technical term, as well as irrelevant to the issues it professes to settle. [pg. 87]

Jacques describes how it is used and where it came from.#

Since the decay of religion, the western world has adopted the motto "Anything goes." Relativism has conquered all.

This bugbear cannot be sheer illusion. When the word is not a mindless echo, what people feel and fear arises from a confused impression that anything which varies with time and place, instead of remaining the same through all circumstances, is a menace: it shifts; it is shift. To hang anything of weight, you want a strong peg firmly held so that it may firmly hold. Thus Relativism is equated with general looseness, with unanchored judgment and unpredictable behavior. This is deemed bad, because, as Bacon said in his terse way about deceit, "It leaveth a Man without a Hold to take him, what he is." Society obviously needs such holds with which to challenge, reproach, condemn the transgressor. [pg. 88]

Continuing on this trend of explanation and examination he explains that morals cannot exist in a vacuum by definition of culture and thus any attempt to solidify them is like trying to fly without understanding the laws of gravity or lift.#

A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least. To find not a single cause but these converging conditions, we must therefore look first at the persistent desires of wester civilization for the past seven decades. We then see the worthiest endeavors-art, science, social science, education, human rights, criminal justice-like the least deliberate attitudes expressed in speech, manners, and dress, helping to do the work of looseness attributed to the quite innocent Relativism. [pg. 89]

To deny change is to deny life.

In any attempt to take this rather vapourous definition of Relativism (and its uses) back to Earth, Jacques lays out a scenario,#

The party of religion and the absolutist thinker posit the existence of "those great unchanging rules of life and conduct, eternally fixed and as old as the world itself." This code has one commandment for each offense, and the charged against relativists is that they vary the rule, depending on circumstances-"situational ethics." The charge rests on a distinction without a difference. For the absolutist ignores his perpetual predicament: his single rule will not cover all the actions it is supposed to govern. Make "Thou shalt not kill" an absolute, and at once conscience asks: What of self-defense? the death penalty? war to recover the Holy Land? [pgs. 90-91]

Jacques makes a point of showing that the "Golden Age of Morals" never was. From the times when "Thou shalt not kill" was bent to the Victorian age when honor and chivalry was not all they are cracked up to be.#

Throughout the Victorian, the very high and the very low easily evaded the sexual and other imperatives. Artists and members of the professions periodically escaped to Paris or the suburbs. Dickens kept a mistress and joined Wilkie Collins on his trips to France, and Samuel Butler visited an accommodating seamstress. All the while, London was reputed the world center of prostitution, and in the equally moral United States the age of consent in more than one jurisdiction was nine years. [pg. 96]

So there have always been hypocrites and morally magnificent boroughs with a hidden red light district.

Jacques continues to show that all forms of absolutism are baseless and lacking of all substance.#

First is irreverence, tt is a problem when individuals have absolutely no standards, life is a carte blanche free for all of pleasure and whim.

It is now accepted that intelligence agents who voluntarily swear perpetual secrecy will break their oath after retirement and tell tales to enliven their memoirs. There's freedom of speech, after all. And what if this old notion of self-respect were a mask for self-importance? "This I do not do" surely puts a pompous emphasis on I, with overtones of superiority. The very notion of "it isn't done" smacks of outworn convention. Anything may be done. Irreverence is a broad mandate. [pg. 101]

This paragraph is interesting in this section as well,

Moreover, the scoffing at formality partakes of a broader, more intellectual attitude, which has come to be held in high honor: irreverence. Celebrities are praised in print for this talent, which functions like an absolute. The possessor ridicules all things on principle, showing thereby that he is not guilty of any unfair discrimination. True, there is another, perhaps compensating absolute, which is compassion. If irreverence betrays a strong mind, compassion shows a deep heart, and neither entails a moral judgment: Pope John Paul II is described as "very committed and very compassionate." The question "committed to what? compassionate toward whom?" does not arise. We are left to suppose that nowadays everybody is an underdog in need of automatic compassion from committed souls. [pg. 99-100]

In closing, Jacques writes about our current moral state and its future.#

Of these [effects of societal shifts], the most disconcerting is that the desire for a better society has generated a neutralizing power in the form of high individual selfishness. Throughout our culture, the most visible trait is concentration on what is owed to the self. This characteristic appears in the proliferation of "rights" and the freedom of the artist to please only himself; in the demand for faultless performance by physicians and manufacturers; in the principle of consumerism promoted by the advertiser: since everybody deserves to have all the new enjoyable, life-enhancing articles, one owes it to oneself to get this one at once. And with the usual paradox of freedom proffered, the fit coerces: "Don't be left out of the parade of pleasure." [pg. 105]

Will R. on Weblogg-ed writes about voice and writing.#

I remember when the five paragraph essay was all the rage and the emphasis was on structure and clarity. And then came those writing workshop days where the emphasis went to process and reflection. And now, with the prevalence of standardized tests, the pendulum is swinging back to form and construction more and more. Regardless of how we teach it, however, I've always felt that most kids never get too far beyond the form, that voice has always been the poor relative that we made time for if we had it. But the truly great writers have both; you can hear them in their writing. The people I read on a regular basis have that voice. It's what keeps me reading.

Read the comment on Jane's blog.#

Aslam on being a "Mama's Boy."#

I now know first-hand about the parent-child role-reversal that ensues when living with an aging parent. As I walked back to my car after dropping her off at the gate, I had to convince myself that she would be fine even though I wasn't flying with her and that worrying about her wouldn't help. Now I anxiously await her call. This despite knowing that she is stronger and wiser than me and has no problem asking for help when she needs it. I take care of her and watch over her and she depends on me to do that but I also know that my quasi-parental role cannot override her fulfilled parenthood, which is why I am not shy about pulling my hair out when she annoys me. She's my mom and it's her job to put up with my tantrums...

Michael Williams puts some interesting quotations from the Bible on his blog about difficult teachings of Jesus.#

Luke 12:49-53

49 "I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50 But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed! 51 Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. 52 From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. 53 They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."

Luke 14:25-27

25 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26 "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple. 27 And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple."

Via the Mac Net Journal is an open letter to Apple from Proteron, the company that the new application switching scheme was taken from.#

I feel that what Apple has done by incorporating third party features into the Mac OS without recognition is both disappointing and dishonest. I invite you to change your approach. There is no shame in recognizing quality work whenever and wherever it appears, especially when it is coming from within the Mac community. We love what you've done with Panther. We love developing for the Mac. As you continue to innovate, please recognize those who have helped you. It's a basic courtesy: give credit where credit is due.

Ryan Overbey pointed to an interesting article about a wandering sorcerer in Sudan.#

E.A. sent me a link to this amazing article describing a recent wave of panic in Sudan over a rogue sorcerer who removes your penis when shaking your hand. One incident involved a man using this evil stranger's comb, only to feel his penis melting away. Teaches you not to use strange men's combs, buddy.

Of course, claims columnist Ja'far Abbas, the penis-stealing sorcerer is a suspicious foreigner, a West African fellow, even an imperialist Zionist agent that was sent to prevent our people from recreating and multiplying. And Abbas weighed in on the comb-incident with his keen scientific mind: No doubt, this comb was a laser-controlled surgical robot that penetrates the skull to the lower body and emasculates a man!! No doubt, indeed! The Sudanese Health Minister Ahmad Bilal Othman said that none of the victims examined were impotent, so he concluded that this was groundless, and that it was sorcery, magic, or an emotional problem. I wish the United States Surgeon General would blame a phenomenon on sorcery one of these days. That would be very, very cool.

The next issue that Ryan Overbey wrote about was the human skin trade.#

The second half of the article deals with the black market in human skins, used in sorcery rituals. Looks like there has been a thriving international trade in human skins, with prices ranging in the thousands of dollars, depending on the age of the victim. I'd love to see interviews with people who buy these skins and use them. How do the skins function in the magical practices of this region? What effects do their users hope to achieve? Who in this region of Africa has enough cash to blow $9000 on a human skin for magical rituals? This isn't nearly as trivial as those Zionist West African Penis Snatchers from Sudan. We're talking people with lots of money, and (I would guess) some political influence, who are contributing to a thriving market of magically efficacious human skins. If you can stomach such gruesome details, this would be a fascinating field of study. Dissertation topic, anyone?

Randall Parker writes about how and why Kim Jong Il Must Go.#

The Chinese, while claiming to have little influence over the Pyongyang regime, in fact could bring down the regime simply by cutting off food and fuel aid. Also, as Rowen points out, if China was to stop deporting North Korean refugees that would spark a rush for the border by millions of North Koreans. So China's willingness to prop up the regime is the most important external factor keeping Kim Jong Il in power.

Rowen's analysis is weakest in terms of constructive suggestions about how to go about trying to bring a regime change in North Korea. One option Rowen doesn't mention is to make a very large scale effort to get information into North Korea about the outside world. Break the information monopoly that the regime holds over the North Korean people. Large quantities of radios and books could be smuggled in via a number of methods and radio broadcasts into North Korea could be greatly increased. Also, all North Koreans who are outside of North Korea could be reached with reading materials as well.

Ian Bicking describes his solution for Kata 19 and the path to optimization he took.#

Adina Levin writes about The Idea of Decline in Western History.#

In the book, Herman examines the idea of decline, and doesn't consider whether the paranoid might actually be right sometimes. He doesn't make distinctions between worries that have been discredited -- the rise of a criminal class based on skull measurements by phrenologists -- and anxieties that proved prescient -- thinkers who forecast the decline of European colonialism -- and those who worried about the dangers of 20th century military technology prior to World War 1.

The gloomiest forecasts of 1970s environmentalists haven't come to pass, but that doesn't mean that we should ignore global warming and massive declines in fish populations today. The threats to civil liberties posed by the Patriot Act might recede -- just as the US recovered from the Alien and Sedition Acts in the early 19th century, and the internship of the Japanese in World War 2. The outcome isn't inevitable.

The book changes the way one looks at today's prophesies of doom, but not enough to cheerfully ignore them.

Wendy and the silly spammers.#

I have been getting Christian spam in one of my email accounts. It comes from names like "Church Love" and subjects are things like "I saw you in church - liked what I saw!" and "Some Christian Single likes you!"

Um...likely not. I want to write back and say "I wasn't in church, I promise you. I'm a Jew JEW JEW JEW JEW" but I know it wouldn't be read. And I would just get more spam. But it's annoying. It's the fakest fakey spam I've ever gotten. What I do want to know is how they got the address, because I don't use it for many things. I have an account that I use to sign up for stuff, so that it will receive the worst spam. But this one, it's just odd.

Richard notes the nice guy just need to finish the race, and that it doesn't matter where.#

Richard links Lee Smith on why learning Arabic is rough for Americans.#

My father's Army career consisted mostly of teaching English to Puerto Rican troops. It was harder for them to learn English than it was for the Americans stationed along with him in San Juan to learn Spanish. It had nothing to do with intelligence—the American troops were just more willing to speak mangled Spanish, because they were motivated. The point should be obvious to anyone who's ever watched a World War II movie where American GIs were stationed in Europe. You have to speak the local language if you want to meet local girls. That incentive doesn't really exist in a Muslim country. This is why the Marines stationed in Cairo told me they hate it so much—it's very hard to meet local girls. It's not just that they're Americans, or that they're infidels—even Muslim men approaching Muslim women on the street are treading on dangerous ground. So, if American soldiers want to learn the Iraqi dialect, they're going to have to spend many long hours in cafes with Iraqi men, drinking tea, playing backgammon, arguing about soccer, and watching Al Jazeera—where those eloquent Russians are putting the young Hashemite monarch to shame.

Ashi thinks there's no such think as love. (Via Richard)#

Things in the >3 department aren't going so great. I'm super lonely. I've become accustomed to the emptiness, but it still sucks. I think I either need to make the decision to stop dating completely, or start dating more and exploring my options in order to prevent myself from getting too hurt. I realize that pain is inevitable in my situation, but any effort made to minimize the pain is worth giving a try. *sigh* It's hard to stay positive when you feel like this.

That concludes my lesson for today, kids. Drives safe.

Love exists. It makes my body numb... and I know that makes me sound dumb.

Dewayne Mikkelson pulls out a great Buffy excerpt.#

Buffy Summers: I went to Angel's last night, and Faith was there. They looked sort of... intimate.
Willow Rosenberg: No way. I know what you're thinking, and no way.
Buffy Summers: You're right. Faith would never do that.
Willow Rosenberg: Faith would *totally* do that. Faith was *built* to do that. She's the *do that* girl.
Buffy Summers: Comfort, remember? Comfort here.
Willow Rosenberg: I mean, please. Does Angel come up to Faith's standards for a guy? Let's see... is he breathing?
Buffy Summers: Actually, no.

Joy notes that at Starbucks Cider isn't really Cider.#

After our order was taken and I did put change into the tip box, I send my daughter to grab an empty table and I go to wait by the pickup counter. The girl who was ahead of me in the ordering line was waiting for her Hot Cider drink and soon enough, it was served up. She picks it up and goes to sit down. No sooner than a minute later, she returns to the pick up line and says to the barista "I think I got the wrong drink, this is just hot apple juice." One of the baristas tells her that is her drink and yes, it was really made with apple juice. In addition, the barista apologizes and offers to get the girl another drink without charge. The girl is consoled. At this point, I glance over at the girl and start commiserating with her as I too was considering ordering the Hot Cider.

Now, a note to Starbucks corporate, what are you guys thinking? Hot apple juice? Isn't the name Cider a bit misleading?

Bacchus continues the thread about nice guys. He has this comment from "Amber":#

Girls don't like nice guys because they are almost always self-deprecating. That's the crux of their "niceness," they're modest. Understand, that societal pressure lead most women to believe that they need to be protected, or at least have to marry someone who COULD protect them if necessary. When a guy puts himself down, a girl generally thinks "he's nice, but if I were in a vulnerable position, would he stick up for me?" The answer is invariably no, because it's obvious that the man will not even stick up for himself. While nice guys will argue that they WOULD stick up for the woman, she has no proof that this is fact. So she dates an asshole, feeling that if worse comes to worse, he'll go to bat for her. This isn't true, but there is more evidence to support that than the nice guy doing it.

In the wrap up Bacchus gives some credit to Lance Arthur, nice.

A wrap-up observation from the "nice guys / assholes" conversation. Lots of people opined that confidence is the key, and that assholes are attractive because they have a lot more of it than your average nice guy. The self-deprecating ways of your average nice guy? Sooo not sexy. Dammit.

Entirely by coincidence, I stumbled over these thoughts by Lance Arthur in a bit where he explains why he hates gay bars. Lance speaks very much to the point, both in explaining why confidence can be elusive, and in suggesting how to find it anyway

A.J. reviews Kill Bill Volume 1.#

Rather than post redundant kudos about the film I wanted to focus on some items only a martial arts film enthusiast like myself might know (Mr. Perry caught the Game of Death tribute). Everyone touched on the level of violence in the film and much has been made about limbs being severed and the very graphic blood spattering scenes. I can't help but think those scenes were inspired by the movie Shogun Assassin which came out around 1980 and was banned from theatres. Also a revenge film, that movie portrayed a fallen Samurai "Lone Wolf" who traveled the countryside with his son exacting revenge on the Shogun lord who ordered his family killed. If you loved Kill Bill I highly recommend you try and watch this film. (I'll probably watch it again this weekend just to see if Kill Bill had more gore).

From Kuro5hin.org is the story of a student being expelled for coming out.#

When Jeffrey Woodard was 14, he asked his mother if he could attend the local private school. She felt it would improve his educational experience by helping him grow spiritually and academically, and Jeff said he "felt God leading him there."

Unfortunately, after school administrators found out he was gay, he was told to leave the school, despite the fact that the Jupiter Christian School handbook only cites bringing a weapon to school, threatening a teacher, student or administrator, and committing a felony as means for automatic expulsion; Jeff did none of these things, he and his mother say.

jshell on bundling and Mac OS X.#

Bundling is such an interesting issue, with Apple's Mail application being the strangest of them all. The original NeXT Mail application was a pretty serious feature of NeXTStep, and maybe this is just carrying over into Mac OS X's marketing and planning. But I find it interesting that changes to the Mail application are sold as significant new features for Panther. I don't mind it - it's nice to have a decent Mail application as part of Panther's price. But what of those who don't want to use it, electing to use Entourage or MailSmith or any other mail application instead? (I used Entourage up to Mac OS X 10.2, as OS X's mail application was unusable for me up to that point). There's still a little rift in the Mac OS community about Apple's Sherlock 3 (bundled with OS X since 10.2) versus the similar (and faster and better and earlier) Watson from Karelia.

Danah Boyd on the social construction of technology.#

Technology is socially constructed. In other words, technology does not exist devoid of its creators' prejudices, biases, cultural assumptions, etc. When men design and build toys and then have other men test them, it should not be surprising that the common experiences of those men get imbibed in the technology. (If this seems surprising, imagine what happens when you assume American roads, habits when designing a car for Amsterdam or Japan. Cultural dependence is not that different.)

The trick is not to design a separate interface (remember, separate but equal never really worked). The goal is to incorporate a wide variety of perspectives into the design and creation of a system, to create a system that people can repurpose to meet their needs. The goal is to encourage flexibility of expression, to not project a limited perspective into the technology. Designers must take into consideration the vast array of potential users, experiences, expectations, not simply their own. This is why things get tricky.

Jill Walker asks, "Do you feel objectified yet?"#

Michael Lucas-Smith writes about human extinction and machine intelligence.#

A great deal of what we do during our working hours has absolutely nothing to do with the real world. Managers, Programmers, Admin Assistants, Bankers.. the only thing that ties these jobs to the real world is that they involve people!

So it's not unreasonable to see that in the future, we could achieve these jobs more effeciently while living in a completely virtual world, like the matrix sans the prison bit. This would be of our own creation.

This world would be more human than anything we've ever made before. It would also be more alien, because in the virtual we can create what our imaginations desire. We can travel to alien worlds where in reality, we cannot.

Back to the point - we're all happily living in a virtual world. Along comes machine intelligence. In a 'real' world, a machine will never be equal with us. It was born because of humans, not because of nature. Therefore it is best adapted to living in a human society, with humans.

PerversionTracker reveals why Mac OS X is so slow.#

Many people have speculated over the years about why Mac OS X is slower than its predecessor, Mac OS 9. Some theories regarding its slowky-pokey performance put forth by the so-called "Mac Community" include the robust underlying UNIXy shit, the advanced graphics system, and so on ad infinitum. They are all wrong, wronger than Wronger McWrongs when he said, "I was wrong."

We here at PerversionTracker have finally arrived at a conclusion, and it is very simple: Mac OS X is slow because it is always converting between the metric and English measurement systems. And further, it uses metric conversion routines designed for a CISC processor, mostly ignoring RISC design principles. When you think about it, it becomes obvious. We all know how progressive Steve Jobs is, so it stands to reason that he pushed for NeXTStep to be based around the metric system, even though the rest of the industry used the English system. When OS X was born, Apple missed its chance to go back to the English system, which would have dramatically improved speed. Through simple bullheadedness, OS X was fundamentally crippled, a mistake Apple is still trying to compensate for today. But this late in the game, it is nearly impossible for Apple to switch to English: too many applications depend on OS X's quirky measuring behavior.

Michael Feldman describes why his son is getting married.#

As the plot unfolded, it became apparent that this was not a case of forbidden love at first sight. Rather, it was an ingenious plot to simultaneously defraud the immigration authorities of both the United States and the Republic of Peru. Joey, although he was actually born in Peru, grew up here, graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, and carries only an American passport. As a legal Gringo, he has to leave Peru for 25 hours every three months, just to renew his tourist visa. The trip to the nearest border (Ecuador) takes three days, and while Joey reports it was kind of fun the first few times, I guess the novelty is wearing thin.

So he figures marrying a full-bloodded Peruvian is the easiest way to regularize his visa status down there. Meanwhile, Cuci has been visiting her aunt in Atlanta, and is having visa problems as well. With a job at the Atlanta Convention Center, suddenly going back to her studies and dead-end position in a doctor's office in Lima seems like a short-cut to nowhere and a fate worse than death. Solution - marry an American.

Alexander Payne had a bad time.#

Phreaknic 7 was, by far, the poorest hacker/infosec conference I have yet attended. Perhaps I was jaded by the 12 hour drive down from Baltimore to the host city of Nashville, but I think that only colored the perceptions of myself and my traveling companions a touch. It really was abysmal.

The talks were almost entirely non-technical. They consistently began late, ended early, and were of blindingly poor quality. I have no notes because there was nothing worth taking notes on. The attendants had little to add, and the organizers little to encourage other than drinking to excess. Ultimately, the only thing separating it from your average local 2600 meeting was its size, duration, and localization to a mediocre hotel in Nashville with a bedbug problem (I kid you not).

Al3x on ownership.#

It'll be odd to have non-functional material possessions. I have a few books and trinkets to my name but I'm not at all attached to them. I almost never keep memorabilia, pictures, letters, or pretty much anything physical. I have my laptop, audio outputs and other sundry peripherals, my phone, my bag, and clothing. That's pretty much it. Not bragging, not proud (it's kind of odd, actually), it's just the way I've come to live after years of shuttling between parents, expecting to run away to places far away, and college (in that order). A bunch of dead-tree cards sitting about, needing to be ordered and shuffled and contained and all those terribly corporeal things will be strange for me.

Ted Leung read a book that I liked as well.#

Tom Coates has some notes on the new Address Book in Panther.#

Also noticed for the first time is the 'send updates' functionality - which I'm sure has been there for ages. It appears to be a way of informing everyone in your address book of any and all changes to your personal address card. I'm interested, but too scared, to see how this might work...