Fumbled Mumblings

Giuliani Cleared of Responsibility for WT7

2008-08-24T11:40:00.000-07:00

NIST has released a report on the collapse of WT7, and it explicitly says Giuliani's backup fuel tanks were not a contributing factor in the collapse.

The investigation team considered the possibility of other factors playing a role in the collapse of WTC 7, including the possible use of explosives, fires fed by the fuel supply tanks in and under the building, and damage from the falling debris of WTC 1.

The team said that the smallest blast event capable of crippling the critical column would have produced a “sound level of 130 to 140 decibels at a distance of half a mile,” yet no noise this loud was reported by witnesses or recorded on videos.

As for fuel fires, the team found that they could not have been sustained long enough, could not have generated sufficient heat to fail a critical column, and/or would have produced “large amounts of visible smoke” from Floors 5 and 6, which was not observed.

Apparently a major contributing factor was the failure of the sprinkler system caused by the earlier collapses of WT1 and WT2.

Keep Your Mouth Shut

2008-08-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

A couple fantastic videos, of a defense attorney and a police officer discussing why you never want to cooperate with a police investigation, no matter how innocent you are.

Essentially it can't possibly help you (no amount of eloquence is getting you out of an arrest), and can hurt you even if you are innocent and tell only the truth (because they might come up with a mistaken witness or evidence that suggests you lied).

I think I figured this out years ago after watching a couple seasons of Law and Order; even though it's a pro-police show, it's still pretty clear that talking to the police brings nothing but trouble. Keeping your mouth shut helps you maintain control over an already crummy situation.

One thing that isn't clear to me is how far you should take this. Taking paranoia to its logical conclusion, you don't want the police to know anything about you. But the police would be a lot less effective if no witness ever cooperated. How does one determine that an investigation is sufficiently removed from one's self that answering questions is safe?

Via Coyote Blog and Double Blind, who adds details on the Canadian laws analogous to the fifth amendment.

Movie Review: Thank You For Smoking

2008-08-07T19:26:00.000-07:00

I expected Thank You For Smoking to an anti-smoking comedy at the expense of the tobacco industry (which I would have been fine with, smoking being one of the few conflicts for which I am willing to resort to fascism).

Well, it certainly was at their expense (and that of Hollywood and politicians for good measure), but the movie was quite a bit deeper than "smoking is stupid". I suppose I shouldn't have expected less from a child of William F Buckley.

And very very funny! Worth the time just to see Nick Naylor convince a class of grade-schoolers that they should give smoking a chance.

Nick Naylor: My point is that you have to think for yourself. If your parents told you that chocolate was dangerous would you take their word for it?
[Children say no]
Nick Naylor: Exactly! So perhaps instead of acting like sheep when it comes to cigarettes you should find out for yourself.

Update on Portland Cropsharing

2008-08-04T22:08:00.000-07:00

My grandmother did some digging - ha ha, get it? digging? hello? - into the details of the communal farming project in Portland she and my grandfather are contributing land to. I think there's easily enough here to warrant its own post.

I've gotten to know Colibri much better since the day I read "Cropsharing in Portland" to him while he weeded the bean field. A few days after the reading I ran into him at the Common Grounds coffee shop on Hawthorne Blvd (best scones in town.) He stopped by my table to invite my friend and me to visit his "show place" garden, just a couple of blocks away. We did that, and I have to tell you, the tomato plants were very impressive!

I now possess information that will refine your understanding (as it has mine) of the arrangement details.

Toxins in the soils. "He amends the soil so that the pH remains above 6.5. Even if there were poisons present in the soil, this would prevent their uptake into plants." You got this exactly right. Colibri was pleased you represented that correctly. But he doesn't test for lead. Because:
Where would he test? He could make twenty spot tests in our smallish plot, and still miss the one spot where we or some previous occupant had regularly dumped toxic substances.
Each test costs...I forget...$47? ...$74?...Too much for Colibri's profit margin to bear.
We would be shocked if we knew the condition of the agricultural land where our food is grown commercially - polluted by the very fertilizers that made the high yields possible? I don't know if I understood Colibri correctly on this point.
Rationale for "Cropsharing." I hadn't heard the Katrina story. Sue told me, or maybe I read in the newpaper article, that Colibri had leased some acreage and signed agreements with a number of customers to provide them with fresh produce. Then he lost the land lease because....I don't know. I imagined a reason like "Evil corporate land owner discovers possibility of realizing obscene profit by developing shoddy ugly multi-family housing in midst of historic neighborhood." Whatever, Colibri hit upon the backyard plot idea to keep from defaulting on his contracts.

In response to being described as a "crazy hippie" he told me, "I have no political agenda. I'm just trying to make it." But then he went on to tell me the historical reason for lawns: they demonstrated that the land owner was so rich he could forgo raising edible crops. And then Colibri said, "But it isn't true. We need to grow food wherever we can. We've been living in fantasy-land."

Anyway, it's great to not have to worry about weeds in the back lawn. And it's great to see eight different varieties of beans growing - you can literally watch them grow. Colibri says they don't need much water. What they like is heat.

It's a good arrangement. We are happy with it.

How To Lose a Customer

2008-08-03T22:08:00.000-07:00

After years of being gouged by Telus for the privilege of having a phone, I finally dumped them on a friend's recommendation for JOIP.

Telus: $30/month for a bare land line (got long distance through Primus - $0.05/minute).

JOIP: $15/month for a local phone number that comes in over my internet connection, including 400 minutes of calls per month to anywhere in the world. After that, $0.03/minute within Canada, $0.02/minute to USA.

Downsides of JOIP?

noticeably lower call quality, including a slight delay in voice transimission
call quality further degraded by heavy use of Internet connection
some flaky features, and no customer service to speak of
no service during power outages

But this is not a review of JOIP; it is a lambasting of Telus!

When I called Telus to cancel the account (because they hung up on my wife when she tried to do the same), I got the "but you are a valued customer, what can we do to keep you" pitch. They offered $16/month for the land line, or $22/month which would include 400 within Canada minutes per month.

My response: If you had given me this deal two months ago I wouldn't have spent $100 on new phone hardware and committed myself to this course of action. So unless you can beat JOIP rates, tough.

Why are companies so stupid? If there is that much of a profit margin and competitors start hammering you on price, you should start reducing prices - unprompted - before people get angry.

Campaigning on Foreign Soil

2008-07-25T22:17:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to figure out why I find Obama's trip to Berlin so unsettling. My conclusion is that I don't have one big complaint, but a bunch of smaller ones.

I generally don't like meddling by elected reps outside the executive branch. Fact finding missions I can endorse, but the (sometimes implied?) commitments made on behalf of the nation are rather presumptuous. It sounds like Obama crossed this line in Iraq, but perhaps the fact he is talking about a time during which he might be President excuses it somewhat?
I don't like absentee voting, which otherwise provides a valid reason for campaigning wherever ex-patriots live. If you are ordered out of the country during an election (like a soldier), sure, that's fine. But people that have chosen to live outside a country probably have differently aligned interests. Yes, I am an absentee voter (depending on the whims of Oregon officials) - but I fully support the stripping of that right. I think the fact that the States have full control over who can vote in their elections probably complicates that issue though.
Speeches to foreigners (like, say, throngs of Germans) seem to imply one of two things:
- "I am willing to throw US interests under the bus to improve relations with you"
- "Start getting used to taking your marching orders from me"
Neither of those sound very good to me.

McCain is certainly doing his fair share of foreign visits as well, but they haven't stood out to me as being particularly offensive.

JibJab Does McCain and Obama

2008-07-17T21:36:00.000-07:00

The Bush/Kerry one was hilarious - this one is pretty good too.

Via Double Blind.

Cropsharing in Portland

2008-07-13T22:20:00.000-07:00

Some crazy hippy* in Portland is running a collective farming operation with the food being grown in local backyards.

I discovered this on my last trip to Portland; much to my surprise, my grandparents' backyard had been converted to cropland (beans, I think).

It sounds like the arrangement details vary quite a bit, but I understand it often works something like this: farmer dude bikes over, creates garden, comes back periodically to maintain garden, and splits harvest with land owners and shareholders of the farming collective.

My first thought was that bringing back sharecropping (a fairly oppressive form of employment, as far as I can tell) to give power to the people was fairly ironic. But I suppose that in this particular mode it's a bit more free-enterprisey - you aren't dependent on any single landowner for your sustenance.

My second thought was that I like the idea of putting my own monster backyard to productive use without doing any work myself, but I am pretty paranoid about the possibility of toxins in the ground - I live pretty close to a highway (when was leaded gas banned?). The hippy in question has a feel-good answer about handling lead and miscellaneous "poisons", but I don't know enough chemistry to know he's correct...

Thanks for your question, Craig. I forwarded your question to Kollibri, who responds that he tests for lead in all his plots.

Also, he amends the soil so that the pH remains above 6.5. Even if there were poisons present in the soil, this would prevent their uptake into plants.

Anyway, pretty neat idea. Anyone doing this in the Lower Mainland of BC?

* I know crazy hippies. Trust me. Plus, his adopted name means "Hummingbird Earth Sunflower" and he was inspired to this task by the fact that sufferers of Hurricane Katrina were dependent on the outside world for food (underwater gardening, anyone?).

Update 2008-08-04: My grandmother has supplied additional details about the arrangement.

Movie Review: Get Smart

2008-07-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

I haven't seen even a single episode of the old TV series by the same name, but I still enjoyed Get Smart.

Steve Carell is joined by The Rock, Terence Stamp, and the guy who plays Hiro on Heroes for this silly movie, which is punctuated by moments of side-splitting brilliance. There is the occasional parallel to real-live current events, but not much beyond some good-natured mocking of President Bush.

I recommend it if you're looking for a chuckle.

Carbon Emissions vs Consumption

2008-07-06T21:50:00.000-07:00

It seems that I've confused "carbon emissions" with "carbon consumption" - probably because I care a little about the latter, and not at all about the former - resulting in a thoroughly sketchy claim that BC's new gas tax won't reduce carbon emissions. It's a lot harder to get out of the carbon consumption chain than the carbon emission chain.

Thanks to Sacha for only quoting the least crazy part of that post!

So, does this mean that the environmentally friendly choice at Safeway is plastic bags because it raises the price of gas? It's all so confusing these days...

That being said, I'm not going to take too much crap from anyone that extols both the economic and environmental benefits of this tax restructuring - if there's one thing that economic growth does not normally lead to, it's a reduction in carbon emissions.

See also this chart at Google's Gapminder.

The BC Carbon Tax is Retarded

2008-06-30T19:29:00.000-07:00

Whoops! I was not thinking entirely clearly when I wrote this post. Proceed with caution!

Sitting in line for gas on the last day before BC's new Carbon Tax is imposed (hey, I was just unluckily low on gas, not hoarding!), I had some time to ponder the full impact of this legislation.

Absolutely nothing, that's what. Well, in an ideal, frictionless world there would be no impact - we can actually look forward to a small amount of productivity being lost in BC, with no decrease in carbon emissions.

If it was just a regular tax hike, it might result in more money being spent on greening our cities, or treeplanting, or another activity that will produce slightly less carbon than just going about life as normal.

But it's not a regular tax hike. In fact, the BC Liberals have gone out of their way to ensure this tax will absolutely 100% not decrease carbon emissions!

By law, government must show how all of the carbon tax revenue flows back to individuals and businesses as tax reductions.

That's right. They hired a bunch of people to define and administer a brand new tax, spent some more cash mailing one time rebates out, and the net result is the money gets shuffled around a bit. I'll take them at their word that the resulting tax cuts will distribute the revenue relatively fairly and that this tax isn't particularly regressive.

Let's restate things one more time to be really clear: A bunch of money is collected. The BC Government takes a small slice off the top to pay for the salaries of the people that administer the program (or other tax dollars have to be diverted for that purpose - same difference). Whatever is left is given back to the people that paid the tax to begin with so that they can afford to by more carbon based products. Oh, and all the companies that have to collect the tax raise their prices a tiny bit to compensate for the extra overhead.

In summary: No reduction in carbon emissions, fewer people in the province doing productive work, and prices effectively go a tiny bit up on everything we buy.

Good job, geniuses.

Freedom of Speech for the Rich and Influential

2008-06-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

In the face of mounting public awareness and anger, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has decided not to prosecute Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine for publishing an article about Islam.

The downside is that this might remove some of the pressure to abolish the CHRC in its entirety, and those fascists will continue to oppress everyone that can't afford teams of lawyers.

The BC Human Rights Tribunal on the other hand did hold a show trial but has yet to pronounce guilt or innocence. Another bunch of leeches on society, those guys.

Via Ezra Levant.

Old Communist Jokes

2008-06-28T10:10:00.000-07:00

David Frum is posting dozens of old jokes from the USSR; most of them are fairly undecipherable if you don't know the players involved, or simply don't translate well. Here are two exceptions:

A Frenchman, a Brit, and a Russian are admiring a painting of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. The Frenchman says, "they must be French, they're naked and they're eating fruit." The Englishman says, "clearly they're English. Observe how politely the man is offering the woman the fruit." The Russian notes, "they are Russian of course. They have nothing to wear, nothing to eat, and they think they are in paradise."

=================================

There was the Russian who bought a car and was told it would be delivered ten years from the purchase date. "Morning or afternoon?" he inquired. "What does it matter?" asked the salesman. "The plumber is coming in the morning."

I don't recall every hearing comparable jokes about the West... I think we spend more time picking on our leaders' personal foibles than the system we live in. Which is a nice luxury, frankly.

Movie Review: Mr. Brooks

2008-06-22T12:45:00.000-07:00

It's always fun to see a fairly wholesome actor do a dark and nasty role; Costner's performance in Mr. Brooks is no exception. It is a testament to the creators' talents that they managed to make such a sympathetic serial killer that I found myself rooting for him before too long.

William Hurt is genius as Mr. Brooks' alter ego (he's not necessarily more evil, just weird in a different way). Their offside conversations - blended nicely with the things other people present are saying - are very entertaining.

It all ends on a pretty bizarre note as well, which seemed fitting given the rest of the movie. Very satisfying.

When Luck has Little Bearing on Success

2008-05-31T22:22:00.000-07:00

Back when Conrad Black's guilty verdict was first announced, the local radio shock-jocks were positively giddy about the various types of sexual assault they thought Black would endure in prison. Ignoring their tastelessness and ignorance of prison partitioning based on crime types, my first thought was that there was no way Black would end up particularly victimized in prison.

While his wealthy family certainly gave him a leg up, it is unlikely he would have been so successful without some talent, and that kind of talent is valuable anywhere. Even in a rough prison I bet he would have risen to the top of the food chain pretty fast.

As it happens he ended up in a minimum security prison and appears to be thriving! He is teaching American History classes (which are apparently popular) and still contributes articles to the National Post a couple times a month.

Hotboxing the House of Representatives

2008-05-24T21:58:00.000-07:00

Is Congress high?

With voters clamoring about record high gasoline prices, the House voted 324-84 in a largely symbolic measure that essentially would declare as illegal any effort by the cartel to set world oil prices.

The bill would authorize the Justice Department to bring suit against OPEC member countries in U.S. federal courts.

Every single Congressman/woman who voted for this bill should be ousted in the next election. That's just embarrassing.

How does one go about getting elected to one of those seats without the slightest grasp of even one of economics, law, or international politics?

American Gladiators, Season 2

2008-05-22T19:26:00.000-07:00

I'm not as down on the re-make of American Gladiators as Sacha, but he is dead right on one point: The trash-talking and intros and backstories are worthless. The show would be completely unwatchable without the aid of a timeshifting device. But with one of those you can skip right past every stupid word that comes out of the Hulkster's mouth, and knock off an hour episode in about 20 minutes!

So what's new in season 2?

There are some new events, and many of the old ones have been revised to be a bit more balanced.

Some new Gladiators, including the winning contestants from last season. Seeing the old winners back is pretty interesting - both are way more muscular now. Not steroids big, but clearly they've been working out a lot in preparation. I thought that their relative smallness might be a hindrance, but both are doing fine. It's pretty funny watching Evan (aka Rocket) tear people off the wall - he was untouchable in the first season in that event, and now he's doing smartass things like climbing above the contestants and attacking them from above.

One oddity in the first episode was an amputee competitor - he had a couple different prosthetic legs he used for different events. I'm not saying I could have done better than him, but his treatment was pretty patronizing; everyone kept congratulating him on a good effort when he clearly wasn't keeping up, and by the end the Gladiators were going out of their way to give him a fighting chance. Not that it did him any good.

Is John McCain a Cylon?

2008-04-19T22:37:00.000-07:00

Some disturbing photographic evidence from metamerist:

BC Ferries Looking Out For Your Safety

2008-03-21T17:42:00.000-07:00

Something to think about the next time you are taking a ferry ride: The BC Ferries union is fighting to get two of the people that helped sink the Queen of the North reinstated.

The BC Ferry and Marine Workers' Union wants the Courts to review the suspension of two bridge officers on the sunken Queen of the North. The Union has filed a petition in BC Supreme Court
In July 2006, BC Ferries suspended Karl Lilgert and Kevin Hilton, two bridge officers on board the Queen of the North the night it struck Gil Island and sank. The Union grieved the suspensions but Arbitrator Brian Foley upheld them.
Foley said the two refused to testify in person at a BC Ferries Divisional Inquiry about the critical time from when the vessel neared Gil Island to when it sank, unless their testimony was protected by privilege. Foley called that a serious and continuing act of insubordination.
The Union applied to the Labour Relations Board for a review of Foley's ruling, but it was dismissed. Now, the Union wants the Court to set aside both Foley and the LRB's rulings.

I hate that organizations like this tend to have no threshold at which point they will stop fighting for their members... you see the same thing with bad cops all the time.

The Hidden Risks of Prosecuting Digital Piracy

2008-03-16T17:58:00.000-07:00

File sharing, theft of intellectual property, piracy, you name it. Some people do it because they are cheap, some people do it to stick it to the man, and many people do it because it is easier than legitimately buying the music/software/movie/whatever. Until big media companies bring their distribution practices into the 21st century, there is going to be rampant piracy.

And since big media companies seem very reluctant to switch business models, that means they will settle for fighting the tide with lawsuits.

OK, whatever. This is all old news.

The interesting part is this: The only reason these lawsuits have been even somewhat successful is because the dominant file sharing applications are built to favor speed and convenience over anonymity. If the lawsuits make using standard P2P too risky, people will migrate to relatively secure networks, like Freenet or Tor. And by "relatively secure", I mean "not worth cracking unless you are looking for terrorists with doomsday devices".

And this is bad!

Not because it massively increases the bandwidth usage of P2P apps, negatively impacting the rest of the internet (although it does). Not because piracy with will grow in leaps and bounds now that users feel there are no potential consequences (and it will).

The bad comes from the fact that these networks provide anonymity by storing data on all member nodes, as well as passing it through random nodes. So by being a piracy-loving member of these communities you are:

Providing camouflage for people doing actual evil things. Think signal-to-noise ratios for FBI agents looking for child porn producers or Osama bin Laden (or something that really offends you).
actually helping those people by storing their data and anonymizing their traffic.

Now, if I was living in a some fascist dictatorship, I would be totally willing to help out global evil in order to thwart local evil. But to do that for free movies? Unacceptable!

But this will be the result of driving end-user pirates further underground. They won't have any idea what they are indirectly supporting, and the risks they are taking on.

Queen of the North Incident Report

2008-03-15T15:03:00.000-07:00

The TSB has released an incident report on the sinking of the Queen of the North. As usual, lots of relatively small mistakes had to be made for this tragedy to occur.

3.1 Findings as to Causes and Contributing Factors

1. The fourth officer (4/O) did not order the required course change at the Sainty Point waypoint.

2. Various distractions likely contributed to the 4/O's failure to order the course change. Furthermore, believing that the course change had been made, the next course change was not expected for approximately 27 minutes.

3. For the 14 minutes after the missed course change, the 4/O did not adhere to sound watchkeeping practices and failed to detect the vessel's improper course.

4. When the 4/O became aware that the vessel was off course, the action taken was too little too late to prevent the vessel from striking Gil Island.

5. The navigation equipment was not set up to take full advantage of the available safety features and was therefore ineffective in providing a warning of the developing dangerous situation.

6. The composition of the bridge watch lacked an appropriately certified third person. This reduced the defences and made it more likely that the missed course change would go undetected.

7. The working environment on the bridge of the Queen of the North was less than formal, and the accepted principles of navigation safety were not consistently or rigorously applied. Unsafe navigation practices persisted which, in this occurrence, contributed to the loss of situational awareness by the bridge team.

8. No accurate head count of passengers and crew was taken before abandoning the vessel, thus precluding a focused search for missing persons at that time.

While the evacuation was fairly successful, the ship was operating around a fifth of its official capacity. A full load of passengers would have been really bad news.

Incident reports like this, while morbid, are phenomenally educational. One of the few things I consider worth paying tax for.

If you want to learn almost everything about a field, read the incident reports. The report for the aircraft collision over Switzerland a few years back is also very good.

Only the Government...

2008-03-12T22:44:00.000-07:00

Nothing quite like witnessing first-hand your tax dollars at work!

I had the misfortune of visiting a Vancouver Service Canada location this week, to get a SIN for my infant son.

First you go through the triage desk, which is actually pretty reasonable except for the fact there are five clerks there but only three of them helping anyone in line. Your details get taken, and you are told to sit down and wait for your name to be called. The place is nearly empty, so it's looking to be a quick visit.

Maybe not so quick... it seems to be about ten minutes between each customer being called up. Oh well, that gives me time to observe the following amusing things:

They store a "secret" key on the top of the entrance door frame. Buddy was quick, but not very stealthy about retrieving it. Not sure where he took it though.
The combination for the blast door that protects the clerks from us is pretty simple. One lady in particular was pretty sloppy about shielding it from my prying eyes.
My amusement about knowing the code was cut short when I realized that right next to the blast door is a sub-waist-high desk that you could just hop over instead. I hope that door didn't cost too much!

So now is about when it becomes clear that there are actually multiple secret queues, because people that got there after me are getting served first. Great! So now I have absolutely no way to measure how much longer the wait is going to be. Much to my surprise, they do have a clock up but it is an hour off, adding to the disorientation. Did I mention that I was reasonably sick too? Good times. At least I can watch the triage staff chat and drink coffee! Bastards.

So I ended up waiting an hour for a five minute process could just as easily have been handled by on online form. It seems that employees of the Government of Canada are not able to handle even two types of responsibilities, so you have to wait for the single guy in charge of your category of business.

Red Even By Portland Standards

2008-03-02T17:40:00.000-08:00

And here I thought that the Minutemen guarding the US from Canadians were out to lunch...

Turns out there are undesirable Canadians sneaking into the US to live illegally. Doesn't want his last name published, but apparently has no problem with the 18 or so pictures featured in the article.

Good riddance, eh!

The $100 Diet

2008-02-19T21:48:00.000-08:00

An offhand comment by Sacha on how cheap food is led to a discussion on how it is possible to eat healthily for $100 a month.

You hit the nail on the head with pasta. I even was able to splurge and buy whole wheat pasta about 1/2 the time (typically twice as expensive). One of the biggest costs was sauce, but I bought it already prepared which added to the cost. Only a little bit of meat and fish, as it is expensive (a little can go a long way with, say, a sweet and sour dish with lots of cheap vegetables). Using inexpensive but full protein-complement alternatives makes it easier. If you eat 3 meals a day, each one on average needs to be <= $1.11.

I never would have guessed that it could even be done; my monthly food budget is something like $200 - $250, and that doesn't even include the inevitable eating out.

Sacha and Tony are smart, patient, and like to cook - all necessary attributes to maintain a diet like this. Unfortunately, I figure that excludes 90% of the population from succeeding at this (I hate cooking), and 99+% of those that would most benefit from the financial savings and improved nutrition.

I wonder if there are any charity groups that teach these kinds of things... kind of along the lines of "teaching a man to fish".

The Simpsons Movie

2008-02-12T20:19:00.000-08:00

Finally, a comedy that didn't put all the funniest stuff in the trailer! The Simpsons Movie was pretty hilarious and actually felt like a movie (rather than a long episode).

Definitely shocking to see some of the crasser stuff, and somehow it felt like the already loose laws of Simpsons physics were broken at times...

I also couldn't understand why they had Schwarzenegger as President, but with the body and voice of Rainier Wolfcastle... why not stick with the guy they've been using for years? Everyone knows who he was modeled after.

"I was elected to lead, not to read!"