Poor NY-ers, with the RNC on the doorstep

Poor old New Yorkers, having to put up with the jackbooted state 'security' associated with the Republican Nash-Null Confession running this week. The RNC will happily Rove through the Swift Boat lies. Can we now expect the Foxy press and the fair and balanced media whores to be taking a closer look at the War Medals of George W. Bush ? I think not! Nor will there be an RNC witch-hunt for Wolfowitz & Rumsfeld's Israeli spy. This is known as keeping the Feith.

The IQ-challenged Chimp will screw up somehow of course. He may remember to wear the casual dark shirt, but forget to keep his fingers together when doing the family salute that his granpaw liked so much. But at least he has been given suitable Republican writing paper.

I expect no critical assessment in the RNC of the war-profiteering by Cheney's cronies. Nor do I expect any concern about any of the impressions Bush's foreign policies make abroad.

I expect no protests within the RNC about the size of Bush's increasing US trade deficit. If he does manage to cheat his way to a 2nd term despite losing the next US election, probably the best thing we foreigners could do would be to forclose on the US debt, insisting we are paid what the US owes us all. The US would be unable to pay, so their bankruptcy would then crash the whole world's economies though. But UBL would the only one happy with that.

Neither will the RNC evaluate the "miscalculation" of 1000 US dead in Iraq, nor will the RNC have the courage to select anyone other than Bush/Cheney, even though that would quite significantly increase the Republican chances, even for example a token Powell/Rice.

The only way for the US to get out of this mess - or at least take one small step in the right direction - is to boot out Bush/Cheney and elect Kerry/Edwards in the coming elections. Even then, the US needs to ensure that Kerry/Edwards get to take over the White House. As we all know, just winning the election is not enough :-(

Kerry/Edwards will then have a short (2-3 month?) period of worldwide goodwill. They need to use that, taking decisive steps to get the rest of the world back in their side, recovering from the PR destruction and FUBAR wreckage which Bush/Cheney will leave behind.

posted by Stu Savory on 29th August 2004 at 07:47 Central European Time permalink Email

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London Taxi Law Lore.

Probably the best known public transport in the whole wide world are the London (UK) bus and taxi. These typically black taxis are also known as Hackney Carriages, and are roomy, comfortable, efficient and well-maintained vehicles. But London cab drivers may easily be the most law-breaking people in the UK capital, technically committing over 120,000 breaches of the law per day!

There are 37 different valid Hackney Carriage Acts, mostly 19th century, but some go back to Queen Anne (1702-1714 AD). And so - theoretically at least - hailing a cab when it's in motion is illegal, they are supposed only to pick up passengers at a taxi rank or other "place appointed". Hence my 120,000 crimes/day estimate, since there are 13,000 cabs averaging 20 fares per 9 hour shift.

Once you're on board, he must accept your fare. Another Hackney Carriage Act requires that the cabby search his cab for lost items before he allows a fare (=passenger) to get out, since it is the driver's responsibility - not yours - to ensure that nothing is left behind in his cab.

A cabby who goes too slowly can be charged with loitering, but if he goes too fast he can be charged with furious driving. On the other hand, if you carve up a taxi in that terrible London traffic, remember happily that it is illegal for a London cab-driver to make 'insulting gestures'.

Those old laws have never been repealed so - theoretically - each cabby is required to carry a nose-bag on the side of his cab as adequate foodstuff for the horse. Also, the cab driver is supposed to ask every potential passenger whether they are suffering from any notifiable disease (specifically, the plague, smallpox, etc). If necessary he may/must carry out a medical check on the spot (sic!). He may not carry corpses or rabid dogs, nor may he bear arms.

Apropos bearing arms : If anyone be guilty of usurpation of the Royal Arms, the penalty - unrepealed since 1592 AD - is technically Beheading. Despite the Murder (Abolition of the Death Penalty) Act, the death penalty has not been totally abolished in the UK. High treason, Seizing one of Her Majesty's ships, Arson in a naval dockyard, and - in that aforementioned law unrepealed since 1592 - manufacturing a bedspread are still capital crimes in the UK.

posted by Stu Savory on 25th August 2004 at 10:06 Central European Time permalink Email

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Why Ferrari always beat Renault in F1

It's no wonder that Ferrari won the Formula 1 manufacturer's team prize and Renault is just an also-ran if this is the way that Flavio Briatore (the Renault team boss) spends his time! Obviously, he's just not feeling up to the job ;-)

I just scanned this in from today's Bild-Zeitung here in Germany and apologise for the quality of the scan, the ink from my doing the crossword puzzle printed through the thin paper. Sorry.

I thought that Formula 1 fan Mandarin Meg might like this photo, but I just remembered that they're off in Hawaii for a week's vacation. Have fun, maybe you'll be back in time to see Schumi win his next world championship; maybe on Sunday already?

posted by Stu Savory on 24th August 2004 at 18:05 Central European Time permalink Email

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Sunday Sundae

Today I'm blogging a collection of links and your feedback from the past week. If you have a website or a blog, I link to it, if not I just put your name in boldface and avoid telling those incredibly annoying spambots what your Email address is, OK? Stop the Spammers!

Sylvia writes that we never need to take another picture ever again, since Howard Hallis has painted "The Picture of Everything" already and so we just need to clip pieces from it. Actually Howard's painting is so detailed, I spend most of the time just looking for things in it and am alway discovering something new. E.G: go look for the Volkswagen logo.

Apropos Volkswagen, it is reported that Disney will be doing a new version of their film about Herbie, the lovable VW bug. This time though, Herbie will be a popular New Beetle. Incidentally, Herbie is the only car to have his own one-line smiley, viz (0\(53)/0)

Claude Covo-Farchi ( Blogging in Paris) liked the Xword I posted on Sunday 15th & wrote

"I don't know more than ten German words (which were not in the xword) 
and you are quite right, it took me between 10 and 15 minutes.
Give me a word game, any word game, even with German words, and I can't resist!"

Referring to the same blog entry Wang Hu (Singapore) objects to my deliberate use of rather strong language in Mandarin (Tom Odda is a very vulgar thing to say in Chinese). Well sir, that was part of the joke, albeit I had assumed that only Mandarin Meg would understand my Chinese pun. Sorry that I offended you and any other chinese blogreaders I may (still?) have!

John didn't like the new animated GIF cartoon in my sidebar and so went googling for a photo of me (Savory) and found instead Gernot Katzer's informative pages at the University of Graz (that's a city in Austria) called Everything about Herbs & Spices where there is a photo of a Savory herb, which John thinks is an improvement over my previous sidebar photo ;-)

A saxy lady (that's not a typo), one Sonja Glass, has been working through my German pages on cryptography and practicing using an Enigma simulator. Welcome, Sonja!

Vic Silveria (Thousand Oaks, California) read one of my motorcycle pages and wanted help building a Triton. I hope I could help. Eckart sold his beautiful Norton, sadly not to me or fp :-(

Hilary has just started taking driving lessons this month, so watch out folks! But actually, I wanted to thank Hilary for a great book tip (see below, in my right sidebar) via her blog:-

"Finished reading The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger at the weekend. 
This is without a doubt the best book I've read in some time. It's a love story with 
the added twist of time travelling - but it's not a sci-fi book... 
I would strongly recommend that everyone go out and read it."

On the strength of Hilary's recommendation, I picked up a copy via Amazon.de and thoroughly enjoyed it, although I seldom read love-stories. The author Audrey Niffenegger is an art professor, but has a great and non-academic style in this, her first novel. Go read it folks. You might then like to pass it on, e.g. via Book Crossing, a neat concept for serial book-sharing.

Pietr (Moscow) liked Wed's article about keyboards and asks for one on calculators. Will do.

On US politics, Doug Alder inter alia blogged about the Julius Blog correlation chart between Bush Ratings vs. Terror Alerts. Draw you own conclusions. Still on the subject of US election politics, Wired News reports about an E-Vote demo Glitch. Actually, these US voting machines without a paper audit trail and with a modem (to let Bush manipulate the vote?) may just be a good idea. Huh? Sure, it means that those of us non-americans, not even in the USA, who have some degree of hacking ability - ahem - can dial in and manipulate the vote too; it's not just Dubya - slouching towards Bethlehem to be born again - who can hack the E-vote

posted by Stu Savory on 22nd August 2004 at 06:45 Central European Time permalink Email

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Write on the speed limit

Gotten used to your keyboard? Think they've always looked like that? They didn't, so let's look at some curious keyboards today then. All our data entry prior to scanners, cameras , and other sensors was done by writing. Writing is generally the speed limitation for most people (incl. bloggers). Over the years man has tried to speed up his writing. Let's see how.

The photo on the left shows a couple of tablets, inscribed some 3000+ years ago. Chiseling pictograms into stone (cuneiform) was a really slow way of writing. The clay tablet on the right was inscribed using a stick (pen) whilst the clay was soft, then letting it bake in the sun. It's slow, carving. As Yahweh said to Moses "Make two tablets and call me in the morning".

After printing was invented, lead slugs of individual letters became available. Many many thousand slugs were needed to print a book. I know an ex-DDR guy my age whose job it was until 1990 to cast the lead into letter slugs, so this technology lasted half a millenium. In the 19th century Ingersoll came up with the idea of enabling individuals to 'type' their own writing, rather than waiting for a printer to set it. As shown in the centre photo he threaded an alphabet of these lead slugs onto a metal guide rail. He positioned a piece of paper behind the guide rail and had two felt inking stations left and right of the paper. Then you could slide the letter you wanted around the rail to the position you wanted on the paper, ink it at the felt ink-depot, and then press it onto the paper. The very first primitive typewriter!. Got you messy fingers though, and gave 'finger-printing' another meaning then.

The next improvement soon followed (still 19th century). Odell's indexing typewriter is shown in the photo above, right. You just moved the index lever to select the letter you wanted and then pressed the lever. The letter was printed and the paper moved along one position. Note that this implies a Courier font (all letters of the same width). Clean fingers here, but still a bit slower than writing in longhand, although in my case, more legible :-)

The next improvement, left side photo, was to be able to feed a sheet of paper through the machine and have the mechanism step letterwise along each line and scroll up linewise too. However, individual letters were still chosen by an indexing mechanism, viz. the pointer on the semicircular scale. No speed improvement yet, but clean and good paper positioning.

The centre photo shows the next improvement, one key for each letter. The keys were on a pincushion style head; complex mechanical guides ensured that each of the letter slugs fed to the same position. In a step back from the Victor's cylindical paper feed the paper had to be mounted in a curved frame. This implies preferred/standardised paper sizes. This particular model is one of my favourite Victorian mechanical marvels.

Both ideas were combined (see right photo) in a wood-and-string prototype of the well known mechanical typewriter still built today. One key per letter, slugs guided to the same position, character and line feeds done mechanically. This design meant that fast typists could exceed the speed of the mechanism though. So the letters were distributed onto the keys in a way which would force the typist to type slowly. This is the QWERTY layout most of us have even on our electronic keyboards nowadays; designed to make you type slowly to avoid the hammer arms getting tangled in the mechanical slugfeed. Printers' setting machines were hammerless and so could use the optimal ETAOIN-SHRDLU letter layout.

In the 20th century, people learnt to type with all ten digits, without looking at the keys, usually at speeds up to 60 wpm. Some of us still hunt and peck with 2 fingers (which is why I prefer to use voice recognition SW). Now that we use electronic keyboards, there is no reason (other than interchangeability between machines and training-habits) to use the QWERTY layout. If you change over to the Dvorak layout you will be able to type faster and with more comfort. It takes about a month to convert and train to get the speed increase, then you'll never look back. On a PC it's just a different key mapping SW, so its even FREE! There are one-handed variants too (or two, for those geeks who can multitask ambidextrously, inputting two different texts, or doing really simultaneous translations?).

So where are we now? And where are keyboards going in the 21st century?

Data entry devices these days are getting smaller, mobile phones must fit in a shirt pocket or be even smaller. At the same time they are being used for SMS and nowadays even answering Emails. Thumbing numerical codes in is not really acceptable for longer Email messages, so devices like the Blackberry and some mobile phones now include a keyboard. There is an ergonomic problem with the small key size, so there are interesting designs to compensate for this. The photo on the left shows a mobile phone dual-purpose keyboard with an alphabetical layout (generally this layout has not been successful in the past).

The centre photo shows the socalled FrogPad, designed as a bluetooth accessory to a mobile phone etc. Note the keyboard layout optimised for single-hand use and including chord-keyboard ideas for multi-functions. Again, it needs retraining away from QWERTY but promises more speed, the manufacturer claims.

The photo on the right shows a Siemens research prototype. It has NO keyboard. But it does have a laser in the upper right which projects a VIRTUAL keyboard onto any surface. You type out your text on this virtual keyboard and the camera mounted next to the laser notes which fingers are being depressed and maps this into a letter "as typed in". Siemens demonstrates the prototype with a QWERTY layout for the larger customer potential, but maybe they could supply Dvorak variants too if there was a demand.

Go, speedwriters, go!

posted by Stu Savory on 18th August 2004 at 06:30 Central European Time permalink

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A cross word in the Chinese Room

If you cannot understand German, then today you can join in my Chinese Room experiment. It's about the philosophy of A.I. (Artificial Intelligence). Let me know how you got on.

Five decades ago, British mathematician, logician, cryptographer and early computer genius Alan Turing came up with the Turing test. Basically, he hypothesized that, if after a while of observing messages to and from a hidden 'server' you cannot decide whether the 'server' is a human being or a computer, then that server (=computer?) must be declared intelligent.

Against this, in 1980 John Searle asks you to imagine yourself a monolingual English speaker locked in a room, and given a large batch of written Chinese 'answers' and a set of rules (in English) - known as a script - for correlating the answers with written Chinese questions passed to you through a small hatch to the Chinese Room. The rules/scripts correlate one set of formal symbols with another set of formal symbols; "formal" (or "syntactic") meaning you can identify the symbols entirely by their shapes. The script instructs you, thereby, to give back certain sorts of Chinese symbols with certain sorts of shapes in response.

Just by looking at your answers, nobody can tell you don't speak a word of Chinese. Producing answers by manipulating uninterpreted formal symbols, it seems as far as the chinese is concerned, you "behave like a computer"; specifically, like a computer running Schank and Abelson's (1977) "Script Applier Mechanism" program (SAM), which Searle used for his example. Therefore, according to the Turing test, the person in the room "understands Chinese". This is how script driven online Bots like Joel Sax's Bot Emperor Norton work.

But in imagining himself to be the person in the room, Searle thinks it's "quite obvious . . . I do not understand a word of the Chinese stories. I have inputs and outputs that are indistinguishable from those of the native Chinese speaker, and I can have any formal program you like, but I still understand nothing." "For the same reasons," Searle concludes, these AI Bots understand nothing of their dialogues since "the computer has nothing more than I have in the case where I understand nothing". Tom Odda, indeed!

So far so good. Now for the 64 million dollar question.
Does Searle's situation change when his extremely large script ( = set of rules) is all inside his head instead of being written down externally?
At what point does understanding begin?

Just to illustrate the Searle/Turing argument, let's do an experiment. All of my blogreaders who do not understand German may join in; it should not take you longer than ten minutes. Below, I give you a German crossword puzzle with one initial word filled in. The numbers preceeding rows and columns just tell you how many letters are in the subsequent word. Below the crossword puzzle I give you a list of the German words which fit in the puzzle; I've pre-sorted the list by word length and then alphabetically just to make it easier for you. After about ten minutes you should be able to brag to your friends that you were able to do a crossword puzzle in German, without any knowledge of the language!

4 letter words : Cela, Ecke, Mono, raet, Sete.
5 letter words : Akten, Alter, altig, Dakar, genau, Guete, Larve, Lasso, Liste, Manie, Opfer, Pfote, Tonic, Waadt
6 letter words : Ataman, Einehe, eirund, Figaro, Flocke, Glarus, Ikarus, Indigo, morsch, online, Rebell, single, Weiler
7 letter words : Abdruck, Ausfuhr, Ausland, Etagere, gerecht, illegal, Laertes, Legende, Notfall, Pelikan, virtuos
8 letter words : Ebenholz, Grimasse, Oelfarbe
9 letter words : Allegorie, Epaulette, Erzaehler, Nitschewo
10 letter words : Extrawurst, Weingarten

Now what do you think about the Searle/Turing discussion?

Thankyou for joining in my Chinese Room / German crossword experiment. You are now qualified to go see the Will Smith Movie I, Robot. Enjoy.

PS : Since the European Union insists on using only EU-standardised decimal scales for temperature, we are off to see the new Michael Moore movie Celsius 488.33°C this week ;-)

posted by Stu Savory on 15th August 2004 at 06:15 Central European Time permalink

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Otto von Guericke sucks!

This week saw the 350th anniversary of the vacuum pump. Otto von Guericke (born 1602, died 1686) is a famous physicist and in 1646 was one of the 4 mayors of Magdeburg (Germany, only about 120 miles ENE of here). He invented a primitive vacuum pump in 1650. Then 350 years ago this week he performed the famous experiment-cum-demonstration of the force of air pressure. He had constructed two copper hemispheres and ground their flanges plane. The two hemispheres were then held together whilst he pumped the air out (to about a 90% vacuum). Atmospheric pressure then holds the evacuated hemispheres together. He then had two teams each of 8 heavy carthorses pull in opposite directions with all their might. Still they failed to separate the two copper hemispheres (for safety's sake, so as not to injure any successful horses, the two halves were loosely chained together too, with about 6 inches of play). When he opened the air valve, the halves fell apart with ease. This famous experiment is being reenacted in period costume to celebrate the 350th anniversary, so it was neat to see an historic experiment being done. See photo above.

After the show, scientific curiosity having got the better of me, I got a chance to measure the diameter of the sphere, and so (assuming only a 90% vacuum) was able to calculate the force needed for the horses to pull the halves apart. A whopping 2.4 ton pull is needed!

He also conducted experiments on varying atmospheric pressure and was thus able to predict stormy weather. He did significant experiments in electrostatics too. His major interest was astronomy though; friends got him to write a book about it, which came out in 1672. In it he hypothesized that the space between planets was "filled" with a vacuum, a stunning idea at the time (remember, these were the times when the Copernican sun-centered system was just becoming popular). However he also suggested that it was an electrostatic force which held the planets together and stopped them flying away from the sun. Sir Isaac Newton's famous book on gravity didn't appear until 1687, fifteen years later.

CStill on the subject of scientific observations, what better way to finish off a really hot (34° C) day than laying back in a hammock at midnight under a black and moonless starry sky, watching the Perseid meteorites (shooting stars) burning up on entry into the atmosphere. Those little sub-millimeter specks of dust are coming in at 50+ kilometers per second! If you missed them this year, remember to watch out on 11th/12th/13th of August next (and every) year, when Earth's and their circumsolar orbits intersect again. No telescope needed, the naked eyes suffice.

And in case you're wondering what inspired my astronomically new blog subtitle, planet Mercury went retrograde again on Tuesday ;-)

posted by Stu Savory on 13th August 2004 at 06:14 Central European Time permalink

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Prudish state and local laws in the USA

On Tuesday I told you an anecdote about life in California, which seemed to me to be the most open-minded of the US states. I've been to about 1/3 of the US states (coloured red on this map), and it seemed to me that the eastern states and the more central ones seemed a lot more prudish and uptight about sex. Maybe this is why first-time US visitors to Yurp often even photograph some of our advertising billboards.

So today I've collected some of the more funny-peculiar US state and local laws for you :-

Alabama
Men may only beat their wives with a stick not thicker than their thumb.

Alaska
In Fairbanks citizens may not permit moose to mate in the street.

Arkansas
Public flirting in Little Rock costs you 30 days in jail.

California
In L.A. you may not bathe two babies in the same bathtub.

Florida
Single, divorced and widowed women may not go parachuting on sundays or public holidays.

Idaho
In Coeur dAlene it is illegal to have sex in a car. Police wanting to make an arrest must however toot their horn politely and then wait 3 minutes.

Kansas
In Wichita, mishandling the mother-in-law is NOT grounds for divorce.

Kentucky
Women are not allowed on the street whilst wearing a bathing suit, unless they weigh less than 42 or more than 92 Kilos OR are armed!

Massachusetts
In Salem even married couples may not sleep naked in a rented property.

Missouri
In St. Louis the fire brigade may only rescue women from burning houses if they (the women) are fully dressed.

Nebraska
In Hastings married couples must wear nightshirts.

New York
In Brooklyn donkeys (asses) may not sleep in the bathtub.

Ohio
In Oxford, women may not undress in front of pictures/photos of men.

Oregon
In Willowdale, husbands may not swear during sex.

North Carolina
Couples may only share a hotel bedroom when the beds are at least 60cms (2 feet) apart at all times.

South Carolina
It is not allowed to swim in open drainwater runoffs.

Texas
In San Antonio it is not allowed to use hands and/or eyes to flirt.

Utah
In Tremonton it is illegal to have sex in the ambulance during a rescue operation. It is also illegal to transport fiddles in paper bags. It is not even allowed to fish from horseback.

Virginia
In Lebanon , husbands may not kick their wives out of bed.

Washington D.C.
Sex is only allowed in the missionary position, all others are illegal.

Wisconsin
In Connorsville men are not allowed to fire their rifles whilst their partner is having an orgasm.

posted by Stu Savory on 12th August 2004 at 06:06 Central European Time permalink

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Sacramento Speeding Story

This is a tale from when I lived near Sacramento for a while. But it's a biker tale, embellished beyond belief, so to be taken - cum grano salis - with a pinch of salt. Some of my blogreaders will know the Sacramento river delta area well, others can look at the lower left of this map.

So there we were, on a big Honda Blackbird (1100cc, 150hp, 160mph sporty bike) and had just turned off west along Highway 12 from Rio Vista towards Fairfield City, when for some reason (after a rapid change-down) the Honda's gearbox got stuck in first gear. So we had to hobble homeward slowly at about 12mph, pissing us off thoroughly, as you can imagine.

Just as we passed the T-junction on Highway 12 with Highway 113, we got stopped by a CHP cop car, to make our day complete, as I was seething already.

"What's the matter officer, was I speeding?"

"Don't get funny with me, guy, my radar shows you doing only 12 mph. Why so slow?"

"Well sir, the signs at the side of the road all say '12' so I was riding at '12', we Brits are well known for being very law-abiding you know" (CHP don't understand sarcasm).

Being magnanimous to a furriner, he says "That's the road number sign, you can go 55 in the States, you know."

At this point he looks at my wife on the pillion, her eyes staring wildly, mouth wide open in shock and her hair standing on end. "What's with her? She on drugs?"

"No ossifer, we just turned off Highway 160 though" ;-)

Whilst on the subject of motorcycling in California, let me point you to Al's excellent website at Pashnit Motorcycle Tours. The particular road I just blogged about, Highway 160, is one of his recommendations too. Al describes the HIGHWAY 160 tour here.

posted by Stu Savory on 10th August 2004 at 06:37 Central European Time permalink

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Y.A.C.S

Last week I went for an interview for a corporate job (didn't get it, BTW). Interesting to hear what they ask these days. First off, there was a written psychological test. New to me, so when I got home I looked up some of these psycho-tests online, so I could practice for the future. Did one or two of the standard tests, just to get the hang of things, then I noticed a gag one, What classic movie are you?, so I tried it. The (clickable) movie poster on the left shows my result. The line at the bottom reads :- "You are the Godfather. You are all about power and control, living by the mafia code." No wonder the woman from HR was twitching when she evaluated my results ;-) Oops!

But maybe you blog-readers had formed this opinion already ;-)

After a test of geek competence came HR's verbal interview. One of the questions was Describe your ideal workplace. So pilot-me raved on about the (non-automated) cockpit of a pre-WW2 JU52, emphasizing total freedom whilst having total responsibility. Triple-Oops, it seems that wasn't team-like enough for them (see the HR woman twitch again). But they'd advertised for an experienced IT-manager with strong leadership. Oh well, another day, another cup of strong tea/// coffee (Guess I just wasn't their cup of tea, HR wanted it watered down ;-)

BTW, the ad wanted "not just Y.A.C.S (Yet Another Computer Scientist)". However, I now read Y.A.C.S as Yet Another Coffee Spoon. That's an oblique reference to a line from T.S.Eliot's poem The love song of J.Alfred Prufrock, which reads "I have measured out my life in coffee spoons", a quotation suitable too for Melanie's coffee-making post yesterday.

Want more poetry? My favourite short English poems are here. Your feedback appreciated.

Whilst in the mood for doing online tests, I found a site which matches one's own politics to various US politicians'. Despite the fact that I found the choice of questions rather limited (and very US-centric), I ran through the quiz. Results? A mere 1% match with Dubya (no surprise) but only a 58% match with Kerry. It seems that Dean would have been a better match for me (72%). Oh well, you can't win 'em all, anybody but Bush!

You may have read recently that Bush-the-incompetent said - and I quote verbatim - "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we!"

Let me give you a current example of how Dubya harms the USA : Until recently, they had a high-level mole inside Al Quaeda, the dream of every anti-terror intelligence person. But that great idiot Bush-the-lesser blew it, by publicly naming the mole, thus setting back the war on terror again. As a result the Brits had to rush their capture operation instead of getting to uncover even more terrorists. How stupid can you get?

posted by Stu Savory on 8th August 2004 at 07:07 Central European Time permalink

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Frabjous Friday

Despite this being the 6th of August, I'm not going to even mention Hiroshima nor am I going to use any contrafactual sentences. Oops. Double-oops. Instead here are some links.

Many Formula 1 fans will be frustrated by the F1 summer pause, be they Schumi fans or waiting to press the Button (BTW: BAR have made Hakkinnen an offer). So first off, I'll provide them with an alternate source for their adrenalin shots. DO NOT DO THIS AT WORK! Turn sound off. Open a (tabbed) Browser like Opera or Firefox or Mozilla with at least 4 or 5 tabs ALL set to http://www.very.de/ and THEN turn up the sound. "This one goes to eleven, Nigel!" Better yet, feed your sound card into your HiFi. Bla Bla Blah, rengadengdeng .. .

As Doug Alder scooped yesterday, the BBC confirms Daleks will battle Doctor Who. Annihilate! Exterminate! Oh deary me, I don't like stairs, I must take steps to avoid them!

My favourite mad research chemist (after you, Carl) - Al Schwartz - has rewritten Dubya's Statement of the Unionation. Luxuriate in wicked and delicious excess, give the jackbooted Department of Ohmland Sickertea tapping your computer an orgasmic thrill when they see you reading it. Oh and BTW, here are the Warning Signs of Covert Eavesdropping.

Now since the word links is also German for left let me just give you some nice political links too. 1) for the Obamamania fans, 2) the Air America Radio website, 3) a good article by catholic Joan Chittister, and 4) Dubya's Harvard School professor speaks his mind about W. Finally, 5) if you can read German, the national TV news program Tagesschau here has started a blog about the US election campaign. Outfoxed?

My ex-UK-navy-submarine friend Terry is attending the Tercentenary (300-year) celebrations of the British capture of Gibraltar. UK defence minister Hoon was there too, so the Spanish were pissed off. Terry says it's a nice place for a mini-vacation though.

Kate provided me with some useful links. They are : 1) the StumbleUpon Toolbar, an interesting way of surfing, which unfortunately doesn't work under Opera. I tested using IE - oh the shame of it! 2) the BBC's Clickonline. 3) for new RSS-feeders like Jeneane Sessum, the Feedburner site. 4) a multilingual text-to-speech demo, and 5) my personal favourite Making the Modern World.

Finally, a fun toy for your weekend, Fly Guy. Oh, and don't forget that it'll be Gary Turner 's birthday on Monday the 9th. I wonder how old porage will taste?

posted by Stu Savory on 6th August 2004 at 06:08 Central European Time permalink

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The Juxtapositions of Fate

One : How fate takes a hand! All things come in threes. So today I want to show you three examples of fateful coincidences. On the 9th September 2001 Al Quaeda attacked the WTC in what became known as 911. Six days later the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel devoted their 15th September issue to 911. As usual the back cover bore an advertisement. This scan shows the back and front covers of that very issue of Der Spiegel.

Two : Last week Capitol Hill Blue reported online that the less-than-bright pResident Bush is using drugs to try to control his depression, erratic behaviour and paranoia. Coincidentally, advertising software inserted an advert into the article. An advert for IQ tests. Not only that, but it's an advertisement for IQ tests with the default set to 90. Here is my screenshot.

BTW, the article claims that these drugs "can impair the President's mental facilities". Now that is an absurd claim that Capitol Hill Blue makes there, which I regard as being highly unlikely!

Three : And the third fateful coincidence? It turns out that there are 3 kinds of bloggers. Those who can count up to 3, and those who cannot.

posted by Stu Savory on 3rd August 2004 at 07:27 Central European Time permalink

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The august TWO

Disturbing thought for the day : TWO is the oddest prime ;-)

posted by Stu Savory on 2nd August 2004 at 05:47 Central European Time permalink

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Blogreaders' visiting habits

Just got my July stats from Site Meter and am now trying to understand them.

The graph on the left shows monthly visits to my blogpages over the last year. It's grown more popular, going from 8 visits a day 10 months ago (when Site Meter started keeping track) to about 70 per day on average now. There was a downward hiatus from February through May, which Doug Alder suggested was due to my introduction of an RSS feed in February. In May 2004, when I instrumented the 2003 archives as well as 2004, the counted-visits started climbed again. But remember this is starting from a different base now. Only 2/3 of the visits are to the current day's blog, the remaining 1/3 are to the archives, whereby August 2003 has proved very popular (due to the prime-number quilt pic?).

The graph on the right shows daily visits during July 2004. There is a weekly pattern, independant of which days I blog on, it seems. Blogreaders come mostly on Mondays and Wednesdays and less on Saturdays and Sundays. The ratio is about 2:1. So I presume half of you are reading my blog from the workplace. The weekend blogreaders seem to come on a daily basis anyway, even if I haven't written anything new. A little tip for those readers: if you subscribe to the RSS feed ( BTW, I recommend Bloglines ) you will be notified when something new appears here.

The graph on the left shows daily visits during the last week of July 2004. The pattern is typical of all other weeks, as explained above. Most visits come at the start of the working week and drop off to half at the weekend. That half seems to comprise regular daily readers.

The graph on the right shows hourly visits (on Saturday July 31st 2004) and is almost meaningless on its own. A collection of such graphs reflects the time zones the blogreaders come from. Site Meter measures the visits and translates them to my time zone. So when e.g. Meg from California reads this blog, her local time is 10 hours behind mine, so she may get logged as early Tuesday morning here, when she actually visited late Monday afternoon, her time. It's vice versa of course for blogreaders in Japan, Australia, Singapore etc.

And because most of us never say thankyou often enough in this world : whoever you all are, thankyou for reading my blog. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow morning.

posted by Stu Savory on 1st August 2004 at 09:11 Central European Time permalink

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