From the AP news wire:

Teen's Vomit Sentence a Conundrum for Cops OLATHE, Kan.—Police departments in Johnson County aren't sure how they'll carry out an unusual sentence a judge imposed on a teenager convicted of intentionally vomiting on his teacher.

Johnson County Magistrate Judge Michael Farley on Tuesday sentenced the 17-year-old boy to spend the next four months cleaning up anytime someone gets sick in a police car....  [full story]

Nature's way of saying "Don't touch!":

(From a short hike down country lanes in the tiny French commune of St. Pair du Mont.)

So Laura and I did some shopping yesterday. She bought me a shiny new 400Gb external hard drive so that I could back up the 200Gb that, with over 35,000 MP3s, functions as my home music server.

The 200Gb drive was also my backup drive, so last night, after hooking up the new drive and going through the usual associated headaches to make it work, I reconfigured all the backup jobs in Retrospect to use the new external drive, and added the old external drive to the list of drives to be backed up.

Well, I started the initial backup at about midnight last night. I VNC to the home box every so often to see how it's coming along. Only roughly 44 hours left to go! Woo-hoo!

(Subsequent nightly backups will, at least, be differential.)

I've been rereading Charlie Stross's Accelerando stories, so I found myself calculating aloud while Laura and I were buying storage space at J&R yesterday. My new hard drive cost $349, which comes out to a little over 87 cents a gig.

About 10 years ago, when I was buying a new PC, I thought I was doing well with a 120 megabyte drive, which probably ran me about $300, if I remember correctly. That was $2.50 a meg, in other words. At those prices, just one gigabyte of memory would have cost me $2,500 (nearly 3,000 times as much as it does now), and 400 gig would have cost a cool million dollars. A million dollars. (Not to mention how unwieldly it would have been to attach 3,333 120 Mb drives to my box!)

Now I have that much storage sitting on my desk, and it's about the size of a trade paperback.

Is that a singularity I spy ahead?

Via Paul Melko by way of David Moles, I encountered this morning a fascinating essay by SF writer and scholar John Kessel exploring and repudiating the morality of intention that underpins Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and attempting to explain the book's enduring popularity.

It's a long essay, and quite worth reading if you have any interest in morality and fiction, but here's a distillation:

The number of times this scenario of unjustified attack and savage retaliation is repeated, not just in Ender's Game but in other of Card's stories and novels, suggests that it falls close to the heart of his vision of moral action in the world.... The same destructive act that would condemn a bad person, when performed by a good person, does not implicate the actor, and in fact may be read as a sign of that person's virtue....

This, I fear, is the appeal of Ender's Game: it models this scenario precisely and absolves the child of any doubt that his actions in response to such treatment are questionable. It offers revenge without guilt. If you ever as a child felt unloved, if you ever feared that at some level you might deserve any abuse you suffered, Ender's story tells you that you do not. In your soul, you are good. You are specially gifted, and better than anyone else. Your mistreatment is the evidence of your gifts. You are morally superior. Your turn will come, and then you may severely punish others, yet remain blameless. You are the hero....

We see the effects of displaced, righteous rage everywhere around us, written in violence and justified as moral action, even compassion. Ender gets to strike out at his enemies and still remain morally clean. Nothing is his fault. Stilson already lies defeated on the ground, yet Ender can kick him in the face until he dies, and still remain the good guy. Ender can drive bone fragments into Bonzo's brain and then kick his dying body in the crotch, yet the entire focus is on Ender's suffering. For an adolescent ridden with rage and self-pity, who feels himself abused (and what adolescent doesn't?), what's not to like about this scenario? So we all want to be Ender. As Elaine Radford has said, "We would all like to believe that our suffering has made us special—especially if it gives us a righteous reason to destroy our enemies."  (John Kessel, "Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality")

There's a passage very early in the Book of Mormon that I've long considered to be the most important (and repugnant) in all of LDS theology. The Book of Mormon is the supposedly historical account of Jewish prophets who fled Jerusalem for America around 600 BC. After they've left Jerusalem but before they've built their boat, God commands our hero Nephi and his contentious older brothers to return to Jerusalem to acquire the "brass plates," an important scriptural record that seems roughly equivalent to the first half of the Old Testament. An evil man named Laban has custody of the brass plates, and not only does he rebuff Nephi's attempts to claim the plates, he steals the gold they've brought in exchange and sends them fleeing for their lives at swordpoint.

Led by the Spirit of God, Nephi returns to Jerusalem that night under cover of darkness, without his no-good brothers. Skulking through the abandoned streets, he stumbles across a man passed out drunk in an alley. It's Laban! Here's what happens next, in Nephi's "own words":

And it came to pass that I was constrained by the Spirit that I should kill Laban; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay him.

And the Spirit said unto me again: Behold the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands. Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord; and he also had taken away our property.

And it came to pass that the Spirit said unto me again: Slay him, for the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands;

Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief.

And now, when I, Nephi, had heard these words, I remembered the words of the Lord which he spake unto me in the wilderness, saying that: Inasmuch as thy seed shall keep my commandments, they shall prosper in the land of promise.

Yea, and I also thought that they could not keep the commandments of the Lord according to the law of Moses, save they should have the law.

And I also knew that the law was engraven upon the plates of brass.

And again, I knew that the Lord had delivered Laban into my hands for this cause—that I might obtain the records according to his commandments.

Therefore I did obey the voice of the Spirit, and took Laban by the hair of the head, and I smote off his head with his own sword." (Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 4:10-18)

(There are more interesting parallels to be drawn between the life of Nephi and that of Joseph Smith, who wrote—er, translated—the Book of Mormon and founded the LDS Church, but Card cuts out the middleman and recapitulates Smith's story more directly in the Alvin Maker books.)

I seem to keep returning in this blog to wrestling with Card's legacy. For a period during my own early development, he was one of the most important influences on my writing. But I hope I've worked my way past the sort of worldview that informs his fiction, and that John won't be writing an essay like this about my work any time in the future.

The giant backup job I started late, late Sunday night will be complete in roughly half an hour. Well, actually that's just the compression and storage phase. Then comes the comparison phase. God, I hope that doesn't take another two and a half days.

Good thing there's more than one computer in the house.

So scientists in Seoul have cloned an Afghan wolfhound:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/08/03/dog.clone.ap/index.html

This is exciting news for some, but I fear it will only bring unintended bad consequences. Like Jay Leno jokes about the boon to Korean cuisine.

Fuck you, you dissembling fuck. I heard you this morning on Morning Edition just as I was leaving for work, bloviating about how the reason the question of where our species came from is important is because if it was just random chance then there's no necessity for morality. Let me tell you, sir, that the atheists and evolutionists—not necessarily equivalent sets, mind you—I know have more morality in their fingernail trimmings than you have anywhere within a ten-meter radius of your wizened little heart. Small-minded, bigoted twits like you may not be able to envision a reason to treat each other well absent some authoritarian patriarch in the sky, but that's only because you can't even bring yourself to treat others well after your professed pal J.C. set the example. Compassion and tolerance are so much more important when life on this tiny rock is the only life we'll ever have, but your only idea of compassion is to force the 14-year-old girls you've rendered ignorant into bringing more hungry, poverty-stricken babies into the world, and your only idea of tolerance is to slither your way into one of the most powerful posts in American government and then whinge endlessly about how so-called Christians like you aren't allowed a place in the public discourse. I may not believe in God, but I do believe in evil, and you're its simpering mug. Eat primordial soup and die, but I mean that in only the most compassionate way. Fucker.

About an hour ago, the police blocked off a section of East 32nd Street just west of the building where I work. They were turning pedestrians back at the yellow tape, and there was vague talk of some kind of threat, maybe at the subway station on the corner (though, thinking back, the blocked-off section didn't seem to include the 32nd Street entrance to the 6 train station). There was no call to evacuate, but with the boss out of town most of us decided to leave the office anyway. I'm home now, but can't find anything on any of the news channels or web sites.

At Fantasy Book Spot, you can find an interview with "writer's writer" Richard Bowes, a friend and workshop comrade. The occasion is the release of his new "mosaic novel" From the Files of the Time Rangers, which I've read in a couple of different drafts, and which I urge you to seek out and pick up. Beautiful, beautiful work.

(Also, don't miss his short story "There's a Hole in the City." There is indeed.)

From Roger Ebert's print review of Deuce Bigelow: European Man Whore:

The movie created a spot of controversy last February. According to a story by Larry Carroll of MTV News, Rob Schneider took offense when Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times listed this year's Best Picture Nominees and wrote that they were "ignored, unloved and turned down flat by most of the same studios that ... bankroll hundreds of sequels, including a follow-up to 'Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo,' a film that was sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic."

Schneider retaliated by attacking Goldstein in full-page ads in Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. In an open letter to Goldstein, Schneider wrote: "Well, Mr. Goldstein, I decided to do some research to find out what awards you have won. I went online and found that you have won nothing. Absolutely nothing. No journalistic awards of any kind ... Maybe you didn't win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven't invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter Who's Never Been Acknowledged by His Peers."

Reading this, I was about to observe that Schneider can dish it out but he can't take it. Then I found he's not so good at dishing it out, either. I went online and found that Patrick Goldstein has won a National Headliner Award, a Los Angeles Press Club Award, a RockCritics.com award, and the Publicists' Guild award for lifetime achievement.

Schneider was nominated for a 2000 Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor, but lost to Jar-Jar Binks.

But Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Goldstein is not qualified to complain that Columbia financed "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo" while passing on the opportunity to participate in "Million Dollar Baby," "Ray," "The Aviator," "Sideways" and "Finding Neverland." As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.  [full review]

You often hear cited as fact that Mormonism is the fastest-growing religion in the world. Peggy Fletcher Stack does a fine job in a recent Salt Lake Tribune op-ed piece of sorting out the evidence that this is untrue:

Today, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has more than 12 million members on its rolls, more than doubling its numbers in the past quarter-century. But since 1990, other faiths—Seventh-day Adventists, Assemblies of God and Pentecostal groups—have grown much faster and in more places around the globe.

And most telling, the number of Latter-day Saints who are considered active churchgoers is only about a third of the total, or 4 million in the pews every Sunday, researchers say.

For a church with such a large, dedicated missionary corps constantly seeking to spread its word, conversion numbers in recent years tell an unexpected story....   [full article]

(A sidebar to the article also lists other fascinating pieces on Mormon demographics, though some will only be of interest to readers familiar with Utah.)

Hey there, all you WordPerfect users aspiring to write short fiction! For you maligned folks and you folks only, I've added a new feature to my inexplicably popular manuscript formatting instructions.

I created a set of WordPerfect templates and macros that let you easily create a properly formatted short story manuscript and update the word count as you type with a simple keyboard shortcut.

Downloading, installation, and usage instructions here.

(For you eager users of Microsoft Word, I'll get to you soon. I'm far more comfortable in WordPerfect, which I've been using faithfully ever since version 4.0 for DOS, and even so, the programming and page-building took quite a bit longer than I expected.)

I can't help it. When someone sends me an email that says:

Kindly advise a good time to contact you along with your contact information.

My dear Good Time, should you choose to contact me along with my contact information, you would find me ever so responsive and earn my eternal gratitude.

asphalteden jogged free a brief memory that hadn't surfaced for some time, so I thought I'd rescue it from the comments section of another entry and put it here, front and center.

I was a developer on WordPerfect 6.0 for DOS back in the early 90s, and I still can't forgive Microsoft for the fake ad they faxed us once that had a picture of Cary Grant running from a plane in North by Northwest and announced the "WP Developer Point-and-Shoot" program, whereby consumers could receive a free copy of Word by delivering a dead WordPerfect developer to Redmond, no questions asked. Okay, it was funny. But still.

My review of the new animated movie Valiant for Science Fiction Weekly is live at SciFi.com. The film purports to tell the story of the celebrated homing pigeons that saved thousands of lives during WWII.

Caveat emptor:  My original grade for the movie was a C+, but apparently the text of my review contained too much that looked like praise to editorial eyes. That's fine because I did spend a while deliberating between a C+ and a B-. But as The Unemployed Critic wrote of Valiant at imdb.com (more succinctly and successfully than I put it), it's "good eye candy that suggests a stronger, more enthusiastic time than it actually provides."

When Laura and I are out walking Ella and a kid asks us what kind of dog she is, sometimes we say, "She's not a dog, she's a bear!"

As if there weren't enough already.

So I installed the latest upgrade to AOL Instant Messenger the other day. Now, I'm no naif here. I've done this enough times to know that, after an AIM upgrade, you have to go back into your preferences and manually set them back to what they were before the upgrade or else you're going to get the damn AIM Today window popping up every time you sign on.

So, the upgrade done, I went into my preferences and turned off the AIM Today popup. Then I restarted AIM.

AIM Today popped up.

Okay, I thought. I did something wrong. I went back into my preferences and turned off the AIM Today popup. Then I restarted AIM.

AIM Today popped up.

I repeated the experiment enough times to verify that, indeed, the way you set the preference has nothing to do with the behavior the app exhibits. AIM Today pops up whether I want it to or not. It's enough to make me switch to another instant messenger. Anyone have any suggestions?

(I'm observing this behavior in AIM 5.9.3861, btw.)

Via conscientious objector fjm. In the end I suppose it was nobody's fault, but the temptation to assign guilt remains great even today.*

Elite Reader You have a Geek Lore rating of 80%

Sure, fans aren't Slans, but you're definitely something special. Your knowledge of speculative literature has to be pretty damned impressive to achieve this score. Long may you flip those pages!

I was starting to get a little bored with the black-black-black version of the web site—way too self-consciously NYC, and besides, it could get a little hard to read after a while. So I've redone things a little, taking a liberal dose of inspiration from my current LJ styles.

I'm surely not the only jazz aficianado here who nurtures a deep love and admiration for the music of Michael Brecker. He's been one of the most in-demand session saxophonists of the past 30 years, recording with the likes of Steely Dan, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Dire Straits, Billy Joel, Todd Rundgren, and literally dozens if not hundreds of others. But it's his jazz work, both as a leader and a sideman, where he's proven himself an all-too-rare innovator among modern tenor players.

He's fairly upbeat in a New York Times article from last week, but there's no getting around the fact that Michael Brecker will die without a bone marrow or blood stem cell transplant:

Mr. Brecker, 56, was recently found to have myelodysplastic syndrome, a form of cancer in which the bone marrow stops producing enough healthy blood cells. His doctors say he needs a blood stem cell and bone marrow transplant, a harrowing procedure that will be possible only if Mr. Brecker finds a stem cell donor with a specific enough genetic match for his tissue type. So far, they have been unable to find one from the millions of people on an international registry for bone marrow donors....

Fellow musicians have been spreading the word in music circles, urging people to be tested to find a possible match for Mr. Brecker. There was even a rumor circulating that a match had been found, which turned out to be false....

Doctors told Mr. Brecker he had a 25 percent chance of finding his match from a sibling or one of his children. But neither his sister, Emily, nor his brother, the trumpeter Randy Brecker, nor either of his children matched. Neither did the distant relatives the family tracked down. He and his family are hopeful about the Red Sea Festival drive because Mr. Brecker's lineage is Eastern European Jewish and doctors tell him patients are most likely to match someone of their ethnic group....

[Susan] Brecker said that although the family was desperate for a donor—and would certainly accept a donation from someone looking to donate only to Mr. Brecker—they were urging people not to become "Brecker-only" donors, but rather to sign up with the donor registry.

"I just want to be on the line," Mr. Brecker said. "I want as many people as possible to get tested, not just for my sake, but for the thousands of other people who might need what I need."  [full article]

Jack Williamson's new novel, The Stonehenge Gate, is out, and he insists it is his last.

I learn this from an article bobhowe points me toward, in the Albuquerque Tribune. It's a delightful piece to read (despite the fact that one paragraph is worded carelessly enough that you might assume there have only ever been two Grand Masters named by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America—Williamson and Robert Heinlein).

Part of the reason the article is so delightful, of course, is that Williamson, at 97, has been writing since nearly the dawn of modern science fiction. His first short story was published 77 years ago, in 1928. He was one of my earliest SF reading discoveries, as well; a family friend gave me a copy of The Legion of Space when I was at that impressionable age. I had the honor of joining him and six or eight other folks for breakfast one morning at the 1997 WorldCon in San Antonio, and I don't think I could have been more awed had I been sitting there with God. I don't think I said two words. If I have a writing career half as long as his, I'll count myself fortunate. Even if he's really done, it's a wonder of the universe that he's been doing it so long and is still with us.

A couple of weeks ago, Laura and I went to a taping of The Daily Show. Before the cameras rolled, Jon Stewart was taking questions from the studio audience and had been riffing on Robert Novak for a while. Laura whispered that I should ask a question about intelligent design, but I couldn't think of one until just moments too late. So here's what I would have asked Jon Stewart had my brain been just a trifle quicker:

"Is Robert Novak better evidence for evolution or intelligent design?"

Laura reports I was laughing in my sleep last night. I have no memory of the dream, but of all the things I could have been doing in my sleep, that one boded well for the day.

If there's one thing you can rely on pedestrians to do, it's to not walk a straight line. Just try to pass one from behind and see.

My contribution to the August CD Mix of the Month Club, celebrating its one-year solo anniversary last night with a fabulous house party in Sunset Park, was Deep Cover, with 88 Keys to My Heart generously thrown in as a 38th birthday bonus.

(The story so far.)

Some names are so potent they predestine the bearer to a particular life's work. Witness this shingle spied on Broadway in Astoria:

I used to think the BMW memory watch that Laura bought me a couple of Christmases back was the pinnacle of cool. But that was before she sent me a link to this.

Be still my ticking heart.

This little [sic] item has excited much comment in the blogosphere, but I will link to it as well as an example of one of the overlooked reasons that the proposed ban on cameras in New York City subways was a bad idea: crime deterrence.

Put the gun away, mister. You're on Candid Cam.

If I hear the phrase core competencies one more time, I may pound the receiver repeatedly against my desk.

Don't even get me started on the fact that our meeting has been labeled a visioning session.

Via fjm (a better citizen, no doubt, than many citizens):

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!

Via holyoutlaw...

You are happy, driven, and status conscious. You want everyone to know how successful you are. Very logical, you see life as a game of strategy. A bit of a loner, you prefer to depend on yourself. You always keep your cool and your composure. You are a born leader and business person.

Ella, closing in for the kill...

Ella, feelin' groovy....

bobhowe calls my attention to an article in today's New York Times about a survey commissioned by a couple of Pew trusts which finds that "nearly two-thirds of Americans say that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools."

John C. Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum, said he was surprised to see that teaching both evolution and creationism was favored not only by conservative Christians, but also by majorities of secular respondents, liberal Democrats and those who accept the theory of natural selection. Mr. Green called it a reflection of "American pragmatism."

"It's like they're saying, 'Some people see it this way, some see it that way, so just teach it all and let the kids figure it out.' It seems like a nice compromise, but it infuriates both the creationists and the scientists," said Mr. Green, who is also a professor at the University of Akron in Ohio.

Eugenie C. Scott, the director of the National Center for Science Education and a prominent defender of evolution, said the findings were not surprising because "Americans react very positively to the fairness or equal time kind of argument."

"In fact, it's the strongest thing that creationists have got going for them because their science is dismal," Ms. Scott said. "But they do have American culture on their side."  [full article]

It boils down to fear, the fear that their beliefs will lose in the marketplace of ideas. What excuse do many of these pious folk constantly cite? That they don't want their children exposed to the "lies" of evolution.

Well, and why not? Why must the children be shielded? If the parents believed their "truth" was strong enough when taught at home and in church that it could counteract "Satan's lies" when taught in schools, then they wouldn't feel a need to push their "truth" into places where it's inappropriate. So in essence, they fear their beliefs will lose in the marketplace of ideas, and their children will choose to believe Satan. They fear that Science is more powerful than Home and Church.

We can only hope this is so, since the rising tide of ignorance in this country is likely to ensure that evolution and intelligent design (a malapropism if ever there was one) become classmates in large swaths of the land. We can only hope that the empirical bulwarks of true science do hold strong in the marketplace of ideas, and that our children are smart enough to see for themselves what's provable and what isn't.

Some may call this flogging an extinct Eohippus, but we should be less worried about handicapping American science even further and more worried about our grandchildren having to learn the Chinese term for moon base.

This entry includes sentiments recycled from my comments to an entry posted in our own markbourne's journal.

Our own crabwalk has created a Hurricane Katrina check-in site:

http://www.katrinacheckin.org/

Good on you, Josh.