Miscellaneous links.

• I've uploaded Vim syntax highlighting for Socialtext, the wiki we use at Cozi. Amusingly, it's derived from code that I found on the Socialtext website, which in turn is derived from my syntax highlighting for Flexwiki.

• Ignite Seattle is back on 2/19. There were lots of interesting, geeky talks the last time I went.

• Via Slashdot, Walter Kirn on the failure of multitasking

  Through a variety of experiments, many using functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain activity, [scientists have] torn the mask off multitasking and revealed its true face, which is blank and pale and drawn.

  I have a moderately bad case of multitasking myself.

Miscellaneous links.

• Are you plagued by User Access Control prompts every time you run Notepad++ on Vista? See Notepad++ and the GUP for a fix.

• According to The Onion, Bill Clinton is running again.

  We saw him speak at a fundraiser for Jim McDermott a couple of years ago. It was impressive to see him stand up for an hour and riff on all manner of topics without notes. The current incumbent is truly a mental midget.

  Not that I especially enjoyed the Clinton years. I often felt left down.

• Larry Lessig is unhappy with the sleaze emanating from Hillary Clinton.

• Joel Spolsky's article on the Five Whys showcases a useful technique to find the root cause of problems by iteratively asking why. He also links to a great New Yorker piece on the efficacy of medical checklists.

• It looks like Harry Reid is trying to give immunity to the telecoms for illegally wiretapping US citizens. Senators Dodd and Feingold are planning a filibuster. Glenn Greenwald has more.

  I contacted Obama and Clinton, telling them:

  Senator ___, you are still a sitting senator.

  I have been underwhelmed so far by your actions on TELECOMS IMMUNITY. I expect you to go back to Washington DC and filibuster any attempt to grant immunity to the telecoms for wiretapping American citizens.

  Thank you.

  (Yes, I've gotten tired of asking nicely.)

  I also contacted Reid, Murray, and Cantwell.

  Some days I feel like a complete crank for caring about this stuff :(

Miscellaneous links.

• Do you see the subliminal arrow in the negative space of the FedEx logo at right? Neither did I until I read about it at Edward Tufte's joint. Now I can't stop seeing it.

• One more year to go until the next presidential inauguration on 2009/01/20. Who knows how much more damage Bush can pull off by then? StickerGiant.com has commemorative swag.

• Impeachment is in the air. Watch Rep. Wexler's speech before the U.S. House of Representatives. Read about State Sen. Oemig's hearing in the Washington Legislature.

• Three days ago, I was sent email by DraftBloomberg.com, asking me to sign a petition to draft Mike Bloomberg as an independent candidate for President. I promptly wrote back, refusing on the grounds that (a) I view Bloomberg as a Naderesque spoiler who's likely to take votes from the Democratic nominee, and (b) I find Bloomberg to be an uncompelling candidate who just happens to be rich enough to self-finance. Looking at their site a few minutes ago, I see that they've only managed to scrape up 1,522 signatures, which is pathetic.

• Ron Paul enjoys an improbable level of support on the Internet, raising staggering amounts of money by appealing to the libertarian bloc. But there's compelling evidence that Paul is a Bircherite not a libertarian, with lucrative ties to white supremacists going back more than 20 years.

• Harold Meyerson argues that we are entering a recession and the old remedies won't do, because the US economy is no longer fundamentally sound.

  Wages have been flat-lining for a long time now, the housing bubble isn't going to be reinflated anytime soon, and the upward pressure on oil prices is only going to mount. As in Roosevelt's time, we need a policy that boosts incomes and finds new solutions for our energy needs.

  Scholars & Rogues argue that getting out of Iraq can fund the necessary changes to get us out of a recession.

• Although I'm generally willing to believe the worst of the Bush administration, I've never found the 9/11 conspiracy theories to be plausible. Matt Taibbi debunks 9/11 conspiracy theories to my satisfaction.

• On a positive note, the .NET Source Code is now available. You can debug through the source of the Microsoft libraries, when you need to. Visual Studio 2008 only.

Miscellaneous links.

• I mentioned Schneier on security theater recently. Via Pavel, I see that Schneier notes that a five-year-old was detained at SeaTac because his name appeared on a no-fly list.

• Male fruit flies, when drunk, become much more likely to court other male fruit flies. Or, Oh God, I was so drunk ...

• Health insurance companies are making out like bandits in Washington state.

• Here's a damning RIAA interview, via Gabriel:

  When asked why the RIAA is going after an easy target--college students--the response made me cringe: "College students have reached a stage in life when their music habits are crystallized," Duckworth said. "And their appreciation for intellectual property has not yet reached its full development."

• A useful, non-partisan guide to the caucus process in Washington state, via Will and Amy.

• From Charlie Stross, fundies say the darndest things:

  • "Everyone knows scientists insist on using complex terminology to make it harder for True Christians to refute their claims. Deoxyribonucleic Acid, for example... sounds impressive, right? But have you ever seen what happens if you put something in acid? It dissolves! If we had all this acid in our cells, we'd all dissolve! So much for the Theory of Evolution, Check MATE!"

  • "A woman wants to abort a rape child? She should have thought of that before she walked down that dark alley without a male prescence, not to mention she should have thought before putting on revealing attire."

  • "Apes are just creatures twisted by Satan to mock Jesus by giving EVILolition credibility. Further more they are naturally lust crazed for human women. Since they are not natural creatures they should be exterminated forthwith as the tools of evil they are."

• From the comments on Charlie's post, a very long set of answers from much more thoughtful people on what they've changed their minds about.

David Postman says that State Senator Eric Oemig is once again pushing for impeachment in the Washington State Legislature. Washington for Impeachment has the text of SJM 8016.

Here's the comment that I posted under Postman's article. It's based upon a speech that I gave at Toastmasters last year.

I've had enough. I'm sick of the lies. I'm tired of the scandals. I'm angry at the loss of civil liberties.

Scandals like the US Attorneys' firings, the Walter Reed outpatients, the Katrina debacle. Pardoning Scooter Libby, who outed an undercover CIA agent. Voter suppression. The War on Science. Theocracy. Corruption. The War on the Environment. Food safety. Toy safety. The Pat Tillman coverup. Terri Schiavo. 700+ signing statements.

The lies. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell lied to the Congress, the American people, and the world, when they told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There were no ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Thousands of American troops are dead, tens of thousands are maimed, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead. Now they're trying to instigate a war on Iran.

Do you miss your civil liberties? The PATRIOT Act is an Orwellian nightmare. What about the "quaint" Geneva Conventions? Extraordinary rendition, torture, and the loss of habeas corpus. Illegal wiretapping of US citizens.

Where is the outrage? It's been a slow-motion coup for the last seven years.

We can't fire Bush. We can't try him in court. We can't have a recall election or a vote of no confidence.

We should impeach him for these crimes: lying us into Iraq; torturing prisoners; and illegally wiretapping US citizens.

Yes, it will be ugly. But if we continue to leave him in office, we become complicit. We already failed one test in the 2004 election. Impeachment will restore US moral authority. Leaving him in office sends the wrong message.

Military personnel and office holders take an oath to support and defend the Constitution.

We can defend the Constitution by Impeaching this President.

And the sooner, the better.

Title: For a Few Demons More
Author: Kim Harrison
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Eos Books
Copyright: 2007
ISBN: 0061149810
Pages: 546
Keywords: urban fantasy
Reading period: 12-13 January, 2008

Another urban fantasy featuring the witch, Rachel Morgan, who runs an investigation agency with a vampire, in a world where ordinary humans were decimated by a virus and vampires, Weres, witches, pixies, and more live openly.

Morgan is reckless and addicted to living on the edge, and her friends will pay a heavy price before the end of the book. You'd want Rachel on your side in a fight, but you'd probably be exasperated with her the rest of the time. She battles demons, both metaphorical and literal, before bringing the book to a bittersweet conclusion.

This is the fifth book in an ongoing series. The books are heavily linked together and best read in order.

Enjoyable and fast-paced.

Title: Coronado
Author: Dennis Lehane
Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Copyright: 2006
ISBN: 0061139718
Pages: 232
Keywords: fiction
Reading period: 12 January, 2008

A collection of short stories and a play, all characteristically dark. Tales of fucked-up lives, tales of people with shitty pasts and no futures, tales of revenge.

Lehane writes brilliantly. His spare description, his dialogue brings the characters to life on the page.

The play, "Coronado", is adapted from an earlier short story, "Until Gwen" — also part of this collection. The repetition does not feel redundant. The play fleshes out the short story, telling it in a different manner.

Recommended, but depressing.

Title: The Assassin's Cloak
Author: Irene and Alan Taylor (editors)
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Canongate Books
Copyright: 2000
ISBN: 1841951722
Pages: 686
Keywords: autobiography
Reading period: 1 January, 2007 — 12 January, 2008

This anthology of diaries contains several entries for every day of the year, drawn from 170 contributors across three-and-a-half centuries. Everyone from Pepys to Goebbels, from Che Guevara to Alec Guinness.

I spent all of last year reading this book, trying to read each day's entries as they occurred. I often failed and would have to read a week or more's entries to catch up. I fell behind towards the end, not finishing my daily devotions until yesterday.

The book was drawn from several years of entries in two Scottish newspapers, and most of the diairists are British. The 20th century is well represented, particularly the two World Wars. Some of the entries from a particular diairist tell a story; others are unrelated snapshots of their lives. Some entries tell of momentous events, such as the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, or victory in war. Others are banal records of an ordinary day, noteworthy only because they give us an insight into a lifestyle that no longer exists. Many of the diarists were famous, at least in their own lifetimes; some live quiet, unremarked, but not unobserved lives.

I wonder how many diaries are written now, in the age of blogging. Will a future anthology have to dig into the Wayback Machine and Google's cache to mine entries from blogs?

Recommended.

Title: Dancing with the Virgins
Author: Stephen Booth
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
Publisher: Pocket
Copyright: 2001
ISBN: 0743431006
Pages: 528
Keywords: mystery
Reading period: 6-11 January, 2008

One woman has been mutilated and another murdered on the bleak moors of Derbyshire. Detective Constable Ben Cooper and Detective Sergeant Diane Fry investigate.

The novel is at least as much about the tense relationship between Cooper and Fry as it is about the mystery itself. This is the second in a series of Cooper-Fry books. Cooper is a local boy, deeply rooted in the rural community, pleasant and trusting. Fry is a bitter loner, who transferred in from a distant city. Quickly promoted over Cooper, she can't understand his easygoing nature.

The mystery is effective, with enough twists to keep you guessing. The characters feel real and human, not authorial puppets.

Miscellaneous links.

• Via Dilip, the epic struggle between an animation and its animator.

• Sparky gets himself tasered. Deliberately. Geesh!

• We at Cozi partnered with Whirlpool to produce an edition of the Cozi software running on a fridge. It has been demonstrated at this year's CES (Consumer Electronics Show), where it's getting favorable reviews. Dory Devlin likes it. Watch Walt Mossberg talk about it too.

Title: Defensive Design for the Web
Author: 37 Signals
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
Publisher: New Riders
Copyright: 2004
ISBN: 073571410X
Pages: 246
Keywords: programming, web
Reading period: 23 December, 2007 - 9 January, 2008

This book contains 40 usability guidelines for websites, ranging from Eliminate the Reset button and disable the Submit button after it's clicked to Give an error message that's noticeable at a glance to Be upfront about item unavailabiity. The topics include error messages, clear instructions, friendly forms, overcoming missing pages, helpful help, obstacles to conversion, and search.

When I state them that baldly, they sound obvious. But they're not. The 37 Signals guys have amply illustrated each guideline with examples of sites that violated the guideline, and sites that exemplify the guideline. The examples are well chosen and bolster their points.

The book feels padded, however. They could easily have reduced the page count by two-thirds. Indeed, an earlier version of this book is available as a 17-page whitepaper. It was certainly worth the $6 that I paid for it at Half-Price Books, but I think I'd feel cheated if I had spent $25 on it.

The book refers to a companion website, DesignNotFound.com. This site is no longer available, which I find unforgivable. It's such a complete contradiction of the principles they advocate. The Wayback Machine reveals the original site.

Title: Iron Council
Author: China Miéville
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Del Rey
Copyright: 2004
ISBN: 0345464028
Pages: 564
Keywords: fantasy
Reading period: 23 December, 2007 - 5 January, 2008

Iron Council is Miéville's third novel set in the world of Bas-Lag, where thaumaturgy (magic) works along with steampunk technology and humans live alongside other sentient species.

Two decades ago, the city-state of New Crobuzon started building a railroad across an enormous desert. The workers are humans, cactacae (cactus people), and Remade (criminals grotesquely modified by thaumaturgy, with animal or mechanical parts grafted on). Eventually, they rebel against the heavy-handed overseers, and flee far into the badlands. Known as the Iron Council, their legend lives on in New Crobuzon.

By now, New Crobuzon is at war with the distant state of Tesh, but also wants to punish the Iron Council. Judah Low, a golemetrist who was part of the Iron Council, sets out from New Crobuzon to warn the Council. He is followed by his occasional lover, Cutter. Back in the city, Ori is a young radical fed up with endless talk who joins a revolutionary group that assassinates the city's ruler.

Miéville writes a very different kind of fantasy from the Tolkien-derived swords-and-sorcery that constitutes so much of the genre. His is a grim world where oppressive oligarchies use militias and sadistic thaumaturges to keep the masses under control. They live in Dickensian squalor in a city that sounds a little like London, with locations such as Dog Fenn, Kelltree, Brock Marsh, Sobex Croix, Petty Coil, Griss Twist, and Lich Sitting Station. Miéville is a Marxist and it shows. His writing is also marvelously evocative.

Recommended.

Today's odds and ends.

• George MacDonald Fraser died the other day. He was the author of the marvelous Flashman novels. I reviewed the last Flashman novel a year ago.

• Kiva seems like a really good idea, connecting people in the emerging world who need microloans with people who can afford to lend them $25.

  Last summer, we attended a house party for Marc Gold of the 100 Friends project. He's a sort of one-man Santa Claus, personally handing out money to needy people and organizations.

• Zane, whose superpower is knowing a Web 2.0 application for every problem, reminded me on Friday of Mint. I just signed up. Mint keeps track of your money across all your accounts and shows you your spending.

  I wanted to know how they make money, but it was hard to track down why it's free. They offer you suggestions on alternatives to your current banks, credit cards, phone companies, etc. If you switch, they get a little cut.

• Ian Welsh endorses Edwards and sums up why he thinks John Edwards is a better candidate than Clinton or Obama.

Herewith several articles that I've read lately for which I'm not going to write individual posts.

• Bruce Schneier has railed for years against security theater, ostensible security measures that have little real effect, but are performed to be seen as doing something — airline security being the most wretched example. Patrick Smith wrote a good piece on airport security follies at the NYT airline blog. We should all be protesting loudly at this nonsense, but no-one does because of the fear of ending up on a no-fly list.

• Also in the NYT, Harold McGee wrote a particularly interesting article on the hidden ingredient in cooking, heat.

  That’s the basic challenge: We’re often aiming a fire hose of heat at targets that can only absorb a slow trickle, and that will be ruined if they absorb a drop too much. ... No matter how efficient an appliance is, the cook can help simply by covering pots and pans with their lids.

  ... 

  Once a liquid starts to boil and is turning to steam throughout the pot — the bubbles of a boil are bubbles of water vapor — nearly all the energy from the burner is going into steam production. The temperature of the water itself remains steady at the boiling point, no matter how high the flame is underneath it. So turn the burner down. A gentle boil is just as hot as a furious one.

  ... 

  In fact it’s easy to save loads of time and energy and potential discomfort with grains, dry beans and lentils, and even pasta. But it requires a little thinking ahead. It turns out that the most time-consuming part of the process is not the movement of boiling heat to the center of each small bean or noodle, which takes only a few minutes, but the movement of moisture, which can take hours. Grains and dry legumes therefore cook much faster if they have been soaked. However heretical it may sound to soak dried pasta, doing so can cut its cooking time by two-thirds — and eliminates the problem of dry noodles getting stuck to each other as they slide into the pot.

• Obama stump speech strategy of conciliation considered harmful:

  Krugman has a problem with what Obama believes about the relationship between politics and economics. ... The bottom line (says Krugman): Politics drives economics, and not the other way round.

  ... 

  Obama presents himself as post-partisan, but partisan politics are needed. ...  So why on earth would Obama think that “tearing down” the Conservative Movement and “lifting this country up” are opposites? They’re the same! And we need the kind of politics that treats them that way. When the Swift Boat guys smeared Kerry, Kerry should have “torn them down.”

  Obama wants to “reach out,” but that strategy has already been tried. Obama says he wants to “reach out” to Republicans. But Reid and Pelosi “reached out” to Republicans, and that strategy was a miserable failure.

  [Read the rest at corrente.]

  I like Obama and I'll certainly throw my full support behind him, should he win the nomination, but Edwards' unabashed confrontationalism is more to my liking.

• Our military spending ($623 billion) is horrendous: more than the rest of the world put together ($500 billion) and ten times as much as the second biggest spender, China. All the leading candidates, both Republican and Democratic, favor expanding the military.