Holes In Thoughts

Reason no. 153,695,355 to loathe urban sprawl

2009-06-16T19:12:00.001-07:00

BLDGBLOG has a scoop on an unusual problem with urban sprawl:

Malfunctioning fire alarms going off inside foreclosed homes have become a major distraction for fire departments in suburban Arizona, according to ABC15 News.

Fire fighters, however, cannot legally enter a property unless they see smoke or have obtained the owner's permission. But in an era of bank ownership and rampant foreclosure, even finding the owners can take weeks.

The result is that "neighbors have to listen to the alarm until the battery dies, which can take days."

SOUNDS LIKE FUN.

Meta-Games

2009-06-16T18:57:00.001-07:00

I find myself playing meta-games a lot. That is, I find a game I like, then find games within the games when I'm bored of the usual means of playing it. For example, back when I played Age of Empires II, I would see how many troops I could get. In the usual game, you were limited to how many troops you could have by a set limit at the beginning. However, with a monk you could convert others' troops past that limit. So what I would do is try to get the computer to keep sending troops and such ad infinitum into the waiting arms of a huge army of monks. The hardest part was to keep the computer from giving up.

In Team Fortress 2, I often find myself more worried about trying to keep as good a ratio of kills-to-deaths as possible.

In chess, I find myself trying two meta games. The first is to not just win, but to win without losing any pawns and converting all of my own pawns to queens without causing a stalemate or checkmate. The second is to checkmate with as many pieces as possible. In checkmate, the king cannot move out of its current space into any of the adjacent 3-to-8 spaces (3 if in a corner, 4 on an edge, 8 away from the edges). So far I've accomplished the first meta-game (several times), but have never managed to get the theoretical maximum of 9 pieces causing checkmate. My current best is seven:

Too Many Crappy Cars

2009-06-06T13:52:00.001-07:00

That's the conclusion I came to when observing these things in the last week:

In the last week, after ultimately rejecting the first house we put an offer in, Rachel and I have been looking at a lot of satellite photos of Tucson, to see the houses we were considering, and what the neighborhoods had in store.
At the beginning of the week, GM declared bankruptcy, and I am now a part-owner in a very large car company.
The notion of differentiating obsolescence and planned obsolescence came up when considering how best to decorate, customize, furnish, and otherwise improve the house I plan on buying.
The economy was estimated to be less in free-fall than it was, but a primary concern remained all of the inactive GM dealerships and factories.

The satellite photos of neighborhoods in Tucson were striking. While ClearChannel says that there are "only" almost 2 cars per household in Tucson, but I suspect that only includes registered vehicles. When you add up all the non-functioning cars in Tucson, I'd bet that the number doubles at minimum. Dive in on Google, go ahead. The nice neighborhoods have 2-car garages (with a car parked outside), and the rest have a car or two parked outside. Then there's always a few houses that have an unbelievable number of cars. They're not always trashy, even, or a problem to the neighborhood because they're in the back yard. But they're there. I found one cute little house with just one car in the car port, and sixteen in the back yard.

(ClearChannel also includes the statistic that 86% of all adults go outdoors everyday, and touts it as a high number; I understand why a Minnesotan wouldn't go outside but ... how does everyone get to work? Or does that not count?)

So that already was making me think that Tucson has more cars than it needs. Then GM went bankrupt, and naturally I wanted to know why. So I've read (or listened) quite a few stories and it boils down to:

Promoting financial wizards instead of people who understood cars. At the beginning of this trend, De Lorean left; Now, after 30 years of this, they actually had to hire outside consultants like Robert Lutz.
Not understanding cars or what people want from them led to a stagnation of innovation: Stockholders were happy they were making money, so the brass did their best to maintain the status quo, not realizing that that's the surest way to kill a company based on technology.
Not making cars people wanted gave foreign manufacturers an opportunity to take up market shares. In 1954, GM had an astounding 54 percent of the total market. They bought into the planned obsolecense strategy, but failed to recognize that that only works when people don't or can't go to other choices. Once Toyota and its peers had worn GM's market share to a mere 19%, Americans made the obvious choice not to spend huge amounts of money on things that broke!
That status quo also relied almost entirely on selling the same number of cars every year, and only to the North American continent. GM never seriously competed in foreign markets because they weren't reliable. So when they lost the American market, but kept building the cars, their factories became albatrosses of overspending.
Finally, the people in charge were so obsessed with that stockholder-pleasing status quo that they continued until they were bankrupt in 2006. Why did they only actually declare bankruptcy in 2009? Basically, they and the financial industry around them stuck their fingers in their ears. Isn't that terrifying?

Anyway, so finally I've been hearing a lot about the economy lately (really? yeah!). In particular, the biggest problem seems to be unemployment (although I admit I'm not an expert). It was particularly problematic for GM, which has a whole lot of factories that are idle.

That's the situation. Like so many things in economics, to me it comes down to supply and demand: GM is making a ton of cars, and there's no demand.

I expect most of the chatter from the news, GM's new bosses, and the President himself will address the demand side: GM must make good cars to survive. Actually, it must start putting out some great cars, if it ever hopes to win back the confidence of the market. It has spent the last 20 years making sure nobody trusted a GM car and all those expensive mechanic bills will not fade from the U.S. collective memory quickly.

However, even if all of the cars to come out of GM really were groundbreaking, affordable, and reliable (and I don't expect that, frankly, because I had more than my share of those mechanic bills myself), the demand side problem remains. Toyota's powertrain warranty lasts half a decade or more (my Prius has a 7-year/100,000-mile warranty). People just don't need to buy cars every two or three years and right now can't afford to. The U.S. has by far the highest number of cars per capita (765 per 1000). Even if they weren't crappy cars, the U.S. just doesn't need to buy as many cars as it used to.

So GM needs to do three things:

Design and market good cars. Give the car-buying world a reason to believe that a GM car is better by any standard than a Toyota.
Sell them not just domestically but export them. China is working furiously on their highway system and yet have just 10 cars per thousant people. India has 12 per thousand. As time goes on, those nations will want to buy cars and if they do a good job, GM might make those sales.
Realize that some of those factories are redundant and find something else to do with them besides let them become icons of remote corporate idiocy and local unemployment. Do something else with those factories.

But do what? Well. Several on the left want to convert them to make green technologies and infrastructure of various sorts. I'm wary of that, in that while I'm sure they'd be fine for manufacture, I don't know how good they'd be at designing. I'd say lease 'em. But all three things have to happen.

UR Doing it Wrong

2009-06-06T11:08:00.001-07:00

So it turns out that certain parts of Phoenix isn't quite as rah-rah Conservative Christian as I thought:

A Phoenix church leader has received a suspended 10-day jail sentence
because his tolling church bells violated a city noise ordinance. [ ... ] The bells at the Cathedral of Christ the King in northwest Phoenix normally chime at the top of every hour from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Neighbors said the bells are too loud and ring too often. (via AP)

The church was then limited to 60db and then, only on particular holidays. I'm sure that the 60-db limit was on the ground, but that is very quiet.

The judge was in an awkward spot because the law is very clear about noise and makes no exceptions for churches. What saddens me is that I fully expect to see this incident used as evidence of anti-theist tendencies of the courts - damning those "activist judges!". If anything, the court simply applied the law, and gave the bishop the good grace of suspending the 10-day jail sentence.

The tragedy here is that the bishop should have engaged more with the neighborhood to find a balance. Community involvement is the main purpose of the Church! (I admit I'm inferring that he didn't try, but if it got to this point he obviously didn't succeed.)

Bonus Fail, courtesy of the Republican National Convention:

Left & Right in a nutshell

2009-06-05T10:05:00.001-07:00

Stolen from the comments of a Democracy in America post:

The American right wing (and I use that term rather than "conservative", since I see no evidence of conservatism in their actions) is quite adept at formulating a framework of discussion that a 3rd grader could understand.
They reduce and reduce (and quite often deceive: the Death Tax, for instance), get into lockstep with each other, and wind up with something almost pristine in its clarity, if not its underlying essence. It's easy to understand. You don't need to hurt your head thinking about it.
The American left wing is like a herd of Harvard-educated cats. Complicated policy proposals, no one agrees with each other, and no one communicates clearly at a 3rd grade level. I've heard Chomsky speak, and it left me nearly bleeding from the ears.

Brilliant. The Right has terrible policy ideas because they're wrongheadedly simplistic. The Left's terrible policy ideas come from vast overcomplication and unintended consequences.

How I Learned to Love the Ranch

2009-06-01T23:18:00.001-07:00

Rachel's Mom sent us an interesting article about how the ranch style houses that became Ubiquitous in Tucson are getting old enough to be historic. I'm not totally sure I buy that all old ranch houses are worth preserving. I'm not even sure I buy the premise that the Ranch was anything more than a part of history, rather than something capital-H Historic. Still, Rachel and I have been flirting with the idea of making a very 1950's style home and pending a clerical error at the bank that awards us with a few million dollars, the only type of 1950's home we're going to get is a ranch home.

So I guess that makes one ranch house in Tucson that I definitely will be interested in restoring.

Trent Reznor on Digg

2009-06-01T23:12:00.001-07:00

Trent Reznor takes part in a fascinating interview, conducted by an able interviewer with questions that were determined by popularity (of course - it's Digg). It's very nice to see an able, professional musician weigh in on interesting questions that largely are about the business and how it's run. After all, I could use advice regarding questions like: "What advice do you have for up and coming bands who chose the internet for distribution over traditional channels?"

It's also nice that the Web allows the interviewer and interviewee stretch a little; there's no time limit really with these sorts of things, unlike on TV or other media that have very specific time restraints. It is a 40-minute interview, but every second is used well because Trent is very good at taking a question with multiple layers and contexts, sorting them out in his head, and explaining his answer thoroughly. I really wish more interviews were formatted like this.

5th Anniversary

2009-05-30T22:55:00.001-07:00

Every time I have a birthday or anniversary with Rachel, I appreciate anew how very easy we have it with each other. We still love each other, we're still in love (well, usually), and it takes very little other than some Magpie's pizza, a good movie and no interruptions to make us happy.

In this particular case, our 5th anniversary yesterday, we got each other a few gifts (which, I must admit are wildly skewed in the cost department): I gave her a quarter-circle of strawberry cheesecake in a bag I decorated, and I got the Complete Calvin & Hobbes. I turned off the phone and computer, and we watched Castle in the Sky.

For the record, the Magpie's Hawaiian pizza, with piñon nuts substituting for peppers, is our new favorite pizza.

Conquistadors

2009-05-30T18:24:00.002-07:00

BLDG BLOG has (yet another) great post with an interview with Richard Mosse, who ran around taking photos of U.S. troops in Saddam's old palaces. The photographer makes what to me is a very interesting point:

The most interesting thing about the whole endeavor for me was the very fact that the U.S. had chosen to occupy Saddam's palaces in the first place. If you're trying to convince a population that you have liberated them from a terrible dictator, why would you then sit in his throne? A savvier place to station the garrison would have been a place free from associations with Saddam, and the terror and injustices that the occupying forces were convinced they'd done away with.

Perhaps instead we should have taken his advice, but I have to admit it was a thoroughly satisfying feeling to see Saddam's shoddy, ridiculous palaces turned into U.S. garrisons. Then again, they are going through the process of giving them back to Iraq (finally), and that does threaten the possibility that the photographer will ever get a chance to photograph all of the palaces (he visited six out of the eighty one palaces).

The Hidden & Unfamiliar

2009-05-29T19:06:00.001-07:00

Taryn Simon's recent exhibition is for all intents and purposes shorthand for a whole series of things that I find absolutely fascinating: Cryogenics and the financial considerations thereof, means of creating light, pet immigration, government cannabis, and more, with a bonus photo of an actual issue of Playboy in braille.

I Heart Hilzoy Reason #12,401

2009-05-29T18:53:00.001-07:00

Even by Republican standards, the Sotomayor meltdown is pretty impressive. Tom Tancredo calls La Raza, which is a pretty ordinary advocacy group, "a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses." Newt Gingrich writes that we cannot accept Sotomayor's rather anodyne remarks about experience being helpful in judging "if Civil War, suffrage, and Civil Rights are to mean anything", which would surely be news to all the African-Americans who are not presently enslaved.

The thing that gets me is that all of the people who are doing so much asinine talking for the Republican Party - Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, G. Gordon Liddy, and Tom Tancredo are professionally unemployed. They're all an ex-something. And they all became an ex- in disgrace:

Dick Cheney, one of most hated politicians in U.S. history and big-time torture advocate
Newt Gingrich, former Speaker who resigned in disgrace after using tax-exempt foundations for political purposes
Tom Tancredo, who didn't bother seeking re-election to the House this year
G. Gordon Liddy, ex-convict who conspired to murder on behalf of Nixon, as well as orchestrated Watergate.

They're surrounded by all manner of talking heads and pundits, who benefit personally from being as loud and controversial as they can. They're killing off what ought to be conservatism.

Once again, Hilzoy saying what I think:

He has chosen a judge who is by any standard exceptionally qualified, and who has, in addition, a fairly conservative judicial temperament [...] But she is also a Puerto Rican woman. If the Republican Party were led by sane and decent people, this would not matter. But they aren't. As a result, they seem to be unable
to see anything about her besides her ethnicity and her gender. The idea that she must be a practitioner of identity politics, a person whose every success is due to preferential treatment, etc., is apparently one they absolutely cannot resist. [...]

I hate it. I want to have a reasonable opposition party. I also don't want people of color, and especially kids, to have to listen to all this bigotry. We should be better than this.

Death to America! Unless They Have Cookies!

2009-05-29T08:28:00.001-07:00

So, it's time for some more harping on the Torture front. Turns out we could've saved a lot of time, trouble, and face if we'd just had the balls to really take it to these scumbags and ... give them cookies:

Former interrogator/member of the FBI Ali Soufan, who testified to Congress last month, tells TIME: "He was a diabetic ... We had showed him respect, and we had done this nice thing for him .... So he started talking to us instead of giving us lectures."

Best comment in the thread (of many, so far):

Terrorist: "DEATH TO THE INFIDEL! I'LL NEVER TALK!"
Interrogator: "Cookie?"
Terrorist: "DEATH TO... what? Er, um, thanks. Where was I?"

It's laughable because it's so obvious: Undermine a terrorist's reason for hating you and they'll talk. America got through the Civil War, two World Wars (quite swimmingly, considering), Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam, and a hundred smaller conflicts without shaming ourselves, but OH NO! There's a bunch of dirty crazy people with jacknives and crowbars!

Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney: For people who are so damned concerned with how History views you, you chose a path practically gauranteed to put you in the same company as America's Worst Enemies. Because you'll probably not go to jail, I will have to celebrate the fact that you can't damage my country anymore when you die. Unless Cheney really is Darth Vader and made of more machine than man after all those heart attacks. In that case, I fully expect him to go on a Terminator-style rampage any moment now.

Memorial Day

2009-05-25T18:10:00.001-07:00

Moment of Zen

2009-05-24T01:03:00.001-07:00

I love Ironic Sans. It's what my blog would be like if I remembered all my good ideas.

And had more of them.

60 Seconds in the Life of Windows from Ironic Sans on Vimeo.

ObWi: Making Me Feel Inadequate (with Bonus Obama Rage)

2009-05-23T08:50:00.001-07:00

The bloggers over at Obsidian Wings keeps saying how I feel, except that they say it better, citing more durable sources, more interestingly, with more snark, and a wider audience. For a while there, when I wasn't blogging, it was partly because they kept pretty much saying what I wanted to say.

So I'll just link to the two most recent posts, regarding ~~Darth Vader~~ Dick Cheney and Obama's speeches on whether or not America is a ~~Banana Republic~~ ~~tortures people~~ ~~lawless nation~~ uses "enhanced interrogation", in which they quote this article examining Cheney's sanctimonius, callow, self-serving, nation-corrupting, callow, illegal bullshit and call out Obama on his incredible, 180-degree, misguided and cowardly decision to justify arbitrary imprisonment by re-naming it "preventative detention."

Yeah, that's right, I'll call Obama's crap, too. You can't have both the ability to arbitrarily imprison people and claim that your country observes the right of habeus corpus. Or, as hilzoy puts it:

The power to detain people without filing criminal charges against them
is a dictatorial power. It is inherently arbitrary. What is it that
they are supposed to have done? If it is not a crime, why on earth not
make it one? If it is a crime, and we have evidence that this person
committed it, but that evidence was extracted under torture, then
perhaps we need to remind ourselves of the fact that torture is
unreliable. If we just don't have enough evidence, that's a problem, but it's also a problem with detaining them in the first place.

Here's hoping I'm wrong, or this is a bone he's (inexplicably) thowing to the morons who are pro-torture, only to take it back later on.

The Greatest Thing of All Time

2009-05-22T22:50:00.001-07:00

Steve Nash's debut video. Pretty much the greatest thing of all time. Ever.

Note: You'll need to know who the Phoenix Suns are. And that Goran Dragic is from Slovenia. And that Robin Lopez does, in fact, resemble Side Show Bob. And that Shaq really was (nominally) a member of the Florida Police. And that Alando Tucker is pretty much walking awesome.

Steve Nash presents SuperBADGE Shaq & Alando Tucker

Still A Maverick!

2009-05-22T21:50:00.001-07:00

There's at least one prominent Republican not dumb enough to throw in with this notion that America and/or history will smile upon the politicians who are unapologetically pro torture: John McCain.

Thank. God!

I was always so glad he didn't give into that crap during the campaign, and I'm very glad to hear that's still the case.

The Internet Knows All: Bunny noises

2009-05-22T12:34:00.001-07:00

Rachel and I picked up a 'game' of making bunny rabbit ears with your hands, trying to sneak up on someone, and bunny-humping their shoulder with your mini-bunny hand. It's a very bizarre game we got from Bookman's.

But we didn't know what sort of sounds to make when you've 'caught' someone. The obvious answer is to Consult! The! Internets!

Insights into a Younger Steve

2009-05-21T20:56:00.001-07:00

I am slowly going through all of my old files. A stack of fifty CD-Rs of miscellaneous photos, old school work, letters, drawings, designs, and notes. A lot of them are repeats of each other. I'm doing this because I'm mildly obsessed with getting all of it - the music archive, my design work, all of it - organized and stored so that I can refer back to it when needed or desired.

This would be incredibly boring (OK, it would be more incredibly boring) if not for the strange things I find in my own coffers. For example, apparently, I had no sense of humor. On August 15, 2002, I wrote a TXT file note to my roommate Joe that read:

Joe, your pranks are annoying.

I have no idea what this was about. But I'm amused now.

The Internet Knows All

2009-05-21T19:06:00.001-07:00

Got an obscure problem in Photoshop?

Someone, somewhere has solved it.

I am continually disappointed in my friends and co-workers for not realizing this.

Japan flashback

2009-05-19T23:11:00.001-07:00

They weren't ALL this weird, but ... wow, this takes me back.

After seeing Japanese TV in person for several months a year, I couldn't watch American anymore. I don't really think it'd be good to think about that fact too much.

Still Picking on Steele

2009-05-19T09:13:00.003-07:00

Michael Steele is the only reason more people aren't laughing at Joe Biden more often. You see, Steele wanted to explain how the Republican Party totally is not looking backwards, and to explain what he meant, he talked a lot about Ronald Reagan. I've highlighted the Not Looking Back in blue, and the obvious looking back that often occurs in the same sentence in red:

The Republican Party has turned a corner, and as we move forward Republicans should take a lesson from Ronald Reagan. Again, we're not looking back - if President Reagan were here today he would have no patience for Americans who looked backward. Ronald Reagan always believed Republicans should apply our conservative principles to current and future challenges facing America. For Reagan's conservatism to take root in the next generation we must offer genuine solutions that are relevant to this age.

Actually, there's a hell of a lot more looking back there than looking forward. And what does the assertion that "Reagan always believed Republicans should apply our conservative principles to current and future challenges facing America" even mean? Did anyone really believe that Reagan would've gone up to the podium and said, "I believe that Republicans should apply our beliefs in the past." In other news, I resolve to keep the job I have right now, instead of the one I quit ten years ago.

There was also a lot of rambling about highly debatable talking points, such as the assertion that Obama has shut out Republicans from legislation (this is not the case), that Republicans won't be 'classless' the way Democrats attacked Bush (I never heard the word 'fascist' from Hannity when Bush was issuing quasi-legal edicts), etc.

Look, I'd love to see a smart Republican Party. I still consider myself conservative. But I value competence much more highly than ideology, and it seems that America agrees with me. Nobody cares that Brownie and Rumsfeld were conservative, loyal Bush guys. All they remember is that they helped make sure New Orleans turned into a 3rd world country for several months (Bush to Rumsfeld during the disaster, when Rummy refused to send in troops to help the National Guard: "Rumsfeld, what the hell is going on there? Are you watching what's on television? Is that the United States of America or some Third World nation I'm watching? What the hell are you doing?").

In America, only competence matters. That's part of freedom. That's something we can all agree on. So will someone fire this guy? Like now?

The New Star Trek's glare aesthetic

2009-05-18T23:22:00.001-07:00

I'd like to point out that U2 was the first pioneer of the effect that I'm aware of when they released the video for Staring at the Sun waaay back in 1997. Be sure to watch in high quality (too bad they don't have HD).

You can see the effect I'm talking about as part of the Star Trek official trailer. It's most obvious at ~1:00 (the shots of the bad Guy), and ~1:17 (the bridge).

Of course, I thought that the movie was awesome, but that doesn't mean it doesn't deserve a bit of trouble for the pretty excessive use of the cool effects:

The Waiting

2009-05-18T21:04:00.001-07:00

I don't mind waiting, generally. I know a lot of people have trouble with patience, but even in fairly daft circumstances, such as waiting 24 hours in SF Airport with no money and nothing to do for a flight, I've kept my cool. Although, to be fair, I was very hungry at the end of that wait in San Francisco. In this case, I am waiting on the County Court to decide whether or not to let me buy a house. We really like the house. We've agreed with the selling agent on a price. I have a load of inspectors' phone numbers ready to go as soon as we get the OK from the court to go into the inspection period of the sale. We've arranged the loan, walked through the neighborhood at night, checked and double checked the neighborhood statistics.

Now we're just waiting. And I can barely stay sane. But it isn't the waiting itself: It's the uncertainty. I get this same feeling during the NBA playoffs when the Suns play. Or when I'm playing a serious game. I was much worse off when I didn't even know when the Court was going to meet. At least now I know when I'm waiting until. But I must admit I'll be pretty upset if, after tomorrow, the Court still hasn't decided.

Dan Savage's Fierce Urgency of Whenever

2009-05-18T17:32:00.002-07:00

Dan Savage is tearing Obama a structurally superfluous behind for sidestepping his campaign promises about DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act, which forces federal institutions to not recognize same-sex marriage) and DADT (Don't Ask, Don't Tell). During the presidential campaign, Obama promised to act to repeal both.

It must be frustrating to hear the talk but not see the walk, but I think something more is going on here. While pressure needs to be made from people like Savage, the absolute worst thing that the President could do to kill the momentum that has brought one state a month to recognize same-sex marriage would be to act to repeal DOMA.

It would be an incredible shot in the arm for the entire religious right wing to see Obama on national TV announcing that. And poor Gibbs is trying his best to keep the cards close to the chest. Remember how often Obama has been proven right in his long-term strategies so far. His maneuvering has so far felled the Clinton ivory tower, gotten Cheney to speak publicly and damn himself on torture, gotten the RNC to implode, and has Republicans giving Pelosi political cover for a Truth Commission (and even gaining support for said Commission among Republicans). Oh, and that whole one-state-per-month rate of recognition of same sex marriage thing.

The point is that tons of progress is being made WITHOUT him having to directly confront the opposition. At the rate things are going, he and Congress will have more than enough political cover to do it soon. When he has that, he'll tell the spineless Dems in Congress to repeal DOMA and DADT the right way - through Congressional legislation. I hated it when Bush thought he could make laws, and I would hate to see it from Obama just as much (if not more, as I expect better of him).

When he issues that directive to Congress, he'll be able to (truthfully) say it was the will of the majority.

But that only happens if he keeps his mouth shut about it for another 8 months or so.