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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "allonymist" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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12:35 pm
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Dear writers of inept hip-hop.
This is a PSA. Here are some signs you should not be rapping on youtube:
- You think that rap is required to be or approximate rhymed couplets of secundus paeon tetrameter. ("My name is MC Something and I'm here to say".)
- You haven't noticed that contemporary rhymes sound very little like early Run DMC and Beastie Boys.
- You haven't noticed that the beat has anything to do with the flow.
- When you hear a near rhyme (ready/identity) or an assonant rhyme (had it/static), you think that the MC has screwed up.
- When you hear a near rhyme or an assonant rhyme, you think this means that you can rhyme anything with anything.
- You try to rhyme things that don't rhyme in your dialect.
- You use aspects of other people's dialects that you do not understand how to use.
- You haven't noticed that rap has a lot of similes in it.
- Your rhymes are just generally wack.
This has been a PSA.
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10:00 pm
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if ((pid = fork()) {
Your attention please. When one or more beings love each other very much and want to have a baby, there are various things they can do, depending on their natures and proclivities.
Wasps like to paralyze caterpillars and lay their eggs on them, so that their hatching larvae will have something yummy to eat. This approach is generous and nutritious.
Lovecraftian cultists like to draw mystic sigils on the floor and offer unspeakable sacrifices to beings out of time and space to summon a baby out of the very dimensions of insanity. This approach blasts your mind, but it ensures that your child will have an extra daddy named Yog Sothoth.
Xenomorph face-huggers like to jump onto the faces of people they don't like, shove their ovipositors down their victims' throats, and wait for their chestbursting young to do what they do best. This approach is good for single parents with ovipositors and a firm grip.
Mad bioscientists like to steal body parts from the most perfect and accomplished babies of their generation, stitch them together, and bring them to life with a thunderstorm. This approach generally yields a thing perfect in its proportions but inexpressibly repulsive in its gestalt that most parents will drive forth in a fit of madness to fend for itself.
Faeries like to take other people's babies and leave a faerie baby-mimic behind. This approach is a good one if you have a changeling ready, but isn't if you don't.
Mad computer scientists write AIs. This approach is quite time-consuming, and persnickity philosophers will question whether you have even in fact created life, and try to lock your baby in a Chinese Room.
Medieval rabbis occasionally make clay babies and write the word אמת on their forehead. This is an emergency method only; under normal circumstances, they tend to take a more traditional approach.
Platypuses lay eggs; snails spike each other with sperm darts; the octopodes pass one another sperm packets; pokémon trainers release their young from red-and-white balls; and the less said about sparkle-vampires the better.
And some people, for whatever reason, just combine their gametes inside a womb, and let a fetus gestate there. This approach works fine if you have all of the right pieces and you can stand to wait nine months plus however long it will take you to get your gametes organized. Also, it is a bit old hat.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) seborn and I have taken one of these approaches, and it is progressing quite nicely. The baby (which we have currently nicknamed "The Puggle") will be ready, if our information is to be trusted, some time around September 15-21.
Edited to add: seborn has made her own announcement. Despite the fact that there are two announcements, they refer to the same anticipated baby. We apologize for any confusion.
Tags: operation puggle
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12:43 am
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My favorite kind of research is "inevitably surprising"
This weekend at Shmoocon, a friend of mine told me an unpublished paper that tries to answer one of my favorite computer security questions. (I can't say too much about what question until it's publicly available.) My friend had provided the idea for this paper, suggested in small part by my past obsession with the question. (It goes, more or less, "Can trivial countermeasure X defeat allegedly powerful technique Y?") I'm pretty psyched about the results ("Yes, trivially!") which seem ready to kick off an entire subfield that I've wanted somebody to kick off for a while.
For my money, a researcher's best friend is a research problem where any experimental outcome is likely to surprise a lot of people. When any outcome is bound to be surprising, any result is likely to be publishable. A good way to find research problems like this is to look for places where people's "future works" sections differ wildly on what results they would expect to find if they tried to do such work.
Man, I can't wait till I can say more about this one.
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10:06 am
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At least one of these must be real.
Good album titles for your deer/moose-themed metal band, "Moosacre":
Moosenaries for Hire
Elkfire and Brimstone
Nights of Satan's Cervids
MegaTONloceros
Fawnatikill
Brocket Launcher
Carrionbou
Stagonizer
Püdüm
Reigndeer of Terror
The Antlerchrist
Okapilypse
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06:08 pm
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A public service announcement for photographers
[An old grainy classroom film begins playing. You see an adorable animated version of Herman Hollerith. He's holding his cat, Bismark.]
"Hey kids! It's me, your ol' pal Hollerith, and I sure do love me some collating! Maybe you know me from my days collating punch cards on expensive loud IBM hardware!"
[We see that Hollerith is standing in front of an old set of pre-vacuum tube machines. Are they the ones that did the 1890 census?? How exciting! Bismark rubs up against one of them.]
"Well, I'm still collating, but now I'm collating pictures from different people taking photos of seborn getting hitched with allonymist , and let me tell you... there aren't nearly none of you who can set your camera's clocks right!"
[Hollerith starts shuffling a pile of punch cards with wedding photographs on them. We see that each time he shuffles, a different one comes to the top. Some are labelled with times before seborn and allonymist even met.]
"Remember, allonymist and seborn enjoy fancy debugging projects, and they don't mind scheduling events either..."
[Hollerith walks over to our loving couple, who are poring over an elaborate set of timelines they have drawn. Is it the plot to a particularly convoluted time-travel story? Have they been zipping about Cambridge at relativistic velocities, and are they trying to figure out who is senior to whom? No, it's a timeline of their wedding!]
"...but constructing a retroactive timeline of an event that happened months ago so that they can find a 'rosetta stone' of short-duration often-photographed moments to synchronize different cameras with can really slow them down! That's why their wedding photos ain't up yet!"
[The impossibly cute couple has their afflatus. They engrave on a set of golden sheets the timeless principles they have discovered: "THERE ARE TWO THINGS EVERYONE WILL PHOTOGRAPH THAT YOU CAN USE TO SYNCHRONIZE THEIR PHOTOSTREAMS: YOUR VOWS, AND YOUR FIRST DANCE. ALL ELSE IS MAYA." They leave these plates in the women's room in the Walker basement, for a future generation to discover.]
[The film closes with a rousing and irritatingly catchy tune, entitled "There's A Computer In Your Camera, And Every Computer Deserves An Accurate View of Universal Coordinated Time." The lyrics to this song are left as an exercise to the reader. Despite the fact that you have only heard this song once on a boring December afternoon as a child in middle school, you will remember it for the rest of your life.]
[Cut back to Herman Hollerith, doing his best Buffalo Bob impression.]
"Hey kids! What time is it?"
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12:06 pm
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Trends in sexiness according to Google hits, 32 months later: Vampires overtake Pirates
| Term | Hits | Old rank | Rank change | | "sexy model" | 1,600,000 | 1 | - | | "sexy nurse" | 1,120,000 | 2 | - | | "sexy teacher" | 869,000 | 5 | up 2 | | "sexy actress" | 680,000 | 4 | - | | "sexy vampire" | 437,000 | 10 | up 5 | | "sexy pirate" | 272,000 | 9 | up 3 | | "sexy canadian" | 240,000 | 3 | down 4 | | "sexy cop" | 179,000 | 8 | - | | "sexy kitten" | 173,000 | 11 | up 2 | | "sexy bum" | 158,000 | 12 | up 2 | | "sexy american" | 152,000 | 6 | down 5 | | "sexy cowboy" | 134,000 | 13 | up 1 | | "sexy student" | 126,000 | 14 | up 1 | | "sexy doctor" | 112,000 | 7 | down 7 | | "sexy robot" | 74,000 | 15 | - | | "sexy nun" | 60,400 | 16 | - | | "sexy chef" | 52,100 | 18 | up 1 | | "sexy ninja" | 45,100 | 19 | up 1 | | "sexy rabbit" | 31,500 | 20 | up 1 | | "sexy firefighter" | 29,700 | 21 | up 1 | | "sexy monkey" | 27,500 | 17 | down 4 | | "sexy lawyer" | 12,700 | 23 | up 1 | | "sexy manager" | 10,200 | 35 | up 12 | | "sexy fbi agent" | 8760 | 24 | - | | "sexy scientist" | 8440 | 22 | down 3 | | "sexy reporter" | 8370 | 25 | down 1 | | "sexy nazi" | 6440 | 32 | up 5 | | "sexy prostitute" | 6350 | 31 | up 3 | | "sexy rabbi" | 5400 | 29 | - | | "sexy writer" | 4460 | 30 | - | | "sexy politician" | 3550 | 36 | up 5 | | "sexy hacker" | 2770 | 26 | down 5 | | "sexy programmer" | 2090 | 37 | up 4 | | "sexy banker" | 686 | 24 | - | | "sexy vice-president" | 524 | 39 | up 4 | | "sexy drug dealer" | 296 | 38 | up 2 | | "sexy bigfoot" | 269 | 33 | down 4 | | "sexy salesman" | 152 | 28 | down 10 | | "sexy dungeon master' | 9 | 27 | down 12 |
I should have checked for zombies and mummies and werewolves too last time. This time I get:
"Sexy mummy" -- 21,600
"Sexy zombie" -- 16,100
"sexy werewolf" -- 5,070
Also, "dungeon master" has plummeted while "manager" has soared. That's not a trend I'm comfortable with.
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10:33 pm
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Bug of the day.
So, I had this C code that ran more or less...
( If you do not read C, you will not find this interesting. )
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01:38 pm
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Apparently I am vulnerable to memes this month.
from maradydd
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
"As a rule this reaction does not take place until at least 15 days after the sore has started. The test in fact supplements the microscopic test just where the latter fails.
"The serological test is also of the greatest importance in the diagnosis of the syphilitic nature, often unsuspected, of a large number and variety of diseases. The evidence was conclusive as to the special value of this test in the diagnosis of cases where a history of infection is unobtainable, or the clinical value is doubtful."
This is from a small sex-ed book printed called "The Report on Life: Men's Edition." The copyrights are given as 1921 through 1934. It had been sitting on my computer for a while since I'd had trouble cataloguing it in LibraryThing, and needed to enter its information manually.
( Sex advice was awful back in the day. )
</lj>
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07:11 pm
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Our marriage is nontraditional too.
In solidarity with same-sex couples here and in other states, seborn and I need to announce to the world, including our more conservative acquaintances, that we are not only opposed to "traditional" marriage, but that we are engaged in a nontraditional marriage ourselves. Here are the ways that seborn and I are redefining marriage.
- It did not change our status as our parents' children.
- Neither of us is chattel or quasi-chattel of the other.
- It is illegal for us to batter or rape one another. (Spousal rape was legal in parts of the US well into the 1980s. In England and Wales, spousehood was a defence against a rape charge until 1991.)
- Neither of our families paid the other.
- Nor did either of us buy our spouse from the other's parents with cash, goods, or services.
- Nor did our parents have veto rights.
- seborn and I do not keep concubines.</lj>
- We are about the same age. (In the average heterosexual couple today, husbands are two years older. In the 19th century, 7 years was average.)
- We had no formal betrothal document.
- We have no formal contract. (Traditional Jewish marriage arguably requires one.)
- We cohabited first. (Scandalous 50 years ago.)
- Neither of us was the first sexual partner of the other. (Hard to find historical data here. Seems to have been scandalous in most of the 19th century, and probably through the early 20th. Unlike cohabitation, it was way harder to do in secret.)
- We are allowed to decide whether to use contraception. (Illegal in much of the US, even for married couples, until Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965.)
- We could get divorced if we wanted to. (Illegal in Maryland till 1701. Illegal in Ireland until 1997.)
- We could get divorced without accusing one another of malfeasance. (No-fault divorce wasn't introduced to the US until California got it in 1969.)
- We cannot have more than one marriage at once. (Quite biblical; still done in many places.)
- Our marriage was not automatically created the first time we had sex. (Church law used to accept this as indicating that two people who intended to marry were married.)
- seborn and I each retain full property rights, and each remain a legal person. (Mississippi started recognizing married women's property rights in 1839 and New York started recognizing married women's property rights in 1848. Louisiana's "Head and master" laws weren't repealed till 1979.)</lj>
- Our families did not arrange it for us. (Standard practice in much of the world.)
- The state would not recognize our marriage without a license. (Marriage licenses were not necessary in Scotland until the 1940s.)
- The state did not make us get a religious wedding. (Civil marriages were not valid in France before the revolution, in England before 1863, or in much of Germany before Bismarck.)
- We are not legally required to change our names for government documents. (Married women weren't allowed to keep their birth names on passports or many other goverment documents until Ruth Hale and The Lucy Stone League were active in the 1920s.)
- If seborn commits a crime in my presence, I would not automatically be held responsible.</lj>
- Being married doesn't stop either of us from signing legal documents or entering contracts.
If you'd like other people to be able to have a non-traditional marriage like ours, you should know that there's a protest against CA-Prop-8 on Saturday at City Hall in Boston, and at a city hall near you. If you think that pre-1950 bigotry was bigotry, but post-1950 bigotry is a timeless tradition that must be preserved for the good of our children... we don't quite know what to say to you. Just try not to be the last ones off the bandwagon, ok?
(Additional historical data welcome, especially corrections. Most research via Google, Wikipedia, and Historical Documents on teh Internets.)
</lj></lj>
Tags: gay, marriage, massachusetts, politics, straight
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06:39 pm
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Tengo un meme.
From the ever-elusive pymander :
If you saw me in the back of a police car, what would you think I was there for?
Answer me, then post this in your own journal to see how many different crimes you get accused of committing.
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07:11 pm
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Spending political capital (politics and vocab)
"I have political capital, and I intend to spend it" was one of W's stupidest quotes ever. Please do not perpetuate it by suggesting to me ways in which you hope President Elect Obama will "spend his political capital."
Capital is what you invest. Spending your capital is a sign of desperation, like spending your retirement fund before you retire. Among the monied (which I am not, but I have read 19th century English lit, ok?), "dipping into the the capital" means bad judgement with a whiff of moral degeneracy.
A politician who spends their "political capital" is one who uses it up and winds up with no mandate or good will left.[*] A politician who invests their "political capital" is one who uses their mandate to pass popular measures that strengthen their mandate, and who uses their good will to govern in a responsible way that gets them more good will.
Okay? Okay.
[*] With this in mind, it could be argued that W's quote was not so stupid, and he meant just what he said. But then it would still be dumb to suggest that Obama do it.
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11:17 am
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In Cambridge, MA voting is screwed up.
So I went to vote this morning, and my name wasn't on the list.
Yes, I'm registered, and I've been registered for ages.
No, I'm not "inactive": I sent in my census form, and I even voted in the state primary in September.
Yes, I went to the polling place yesterday to check whether my name was on the list outside. It was.
The bad news is that I'm not alone here. According to the polling worker, this happened to a bunch of people due to a lost CD. She said it was at the state level, but I'm not sure I believe that: if you look at the boston.com pollwatcher results , this seems to be going on in Cambridge and not much of anywhere else.
The good news is that since this is happening to lots of people, they have instructions for what to do about it, and I got to vote anyway: they're checking names against a backup list, which seemed to be the same as the list posted outside the polling place. My ballot was a real honest-to-God non-provisional ballot.
More good news: this looks more like incompetence than fraud. If, as it seems, it's confined to Cambridge, it hasn't got even a hint of a chance of tipping the state's totals on the presidential or senate race, and none of the other races we can vote on contested in Cambridge.
Personally, I think somebody should resign over this. The number for the Cambridge Election Commission is 617-349-4361. It is busy. I assume there's another number that the polling places can use.
And if you try to vote but are prevented from doing so, and you can't resolve the problem at the voting place, you can reach the Obama-Biden campaign's hotline at 1-877-US-4-OBAMA. (No; I haven't tried calling them, since I did get to vote, and they have more important things to do than record one-town irregularities in Massachuesetts.)
Edited to add:
Wickedlocal.com had more information.
Actual reporting, with an explanation for the "missing CD" thing, at Cambridge Politics.
The Herald has a story.
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11:03 pm
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Some official Massachusetts days you may not have known to celebrate
Chapter 6 of the Massachusetts General Laws (I think it's 6; that page is down right now) lists a bunch of days, weeks, months, and two "times" that the Governor is required annually to announce or declare. Here they are, referenced by which part of chapter 6 they come from.
I hope you're all currently celebrating Pro-Life Month, Lupus Awareness Month, Head Injury Awareness Month, Polish-American Heritage Month, and Italian-American Heritage Month appropriately.
(I apologize for all errors; I am not a lawyer; this is not legal advice; no, you don't get to take these days off work.)
January
8 New Orleans Day (12F)
commemorates the battle of New Orleans, I believe.
14 Albert Schweitzer's Reverence for Life Day (12T)
15 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (15S)
29 Thomas Paine Day (15PPPP)
Third week: Jaycee week (15Y)
Last week: Child Nutrition Week (15X)
( More months below. )
See also the Massachusetts Chapter 272 Purity Test.
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09:28 pm
[Link] | If you live in the part of Cambridge I do, you can be pretty sure how your neighbors will go in the general election in November. So let's look at the state primary, shall we? It's tomorrow, after all! (Tuesday, September 16.)
The Republicans and the Green-Rainbow and Working Families parties have no contested races on their ballots, so let's consider the Democrats, who have two contested nominations:
US SENATE: John Kerry vs Ed O'Reilly.
Ordinarily, I'd consider a protest vote against Kerry's history of war-triangulation, just to remind him not to get too complacent, but I don't think O'Reilly is a guy I can vote for in good conscience. First off, he's got no legislative experience I can find on his website, and the US Senate isn't exactly a beginner's legislative body. Secondly, as recently as 2007, it seems he was doing his best to revive the scurrilous anti-Kerry smears from 2004, which in my book makes him come off as either dishonest or gullible. (EDIT: Later in the thread, he shows up and says that it was not his intention, despite repeating those smears, to lend them credence. I don't personally buy it, but hey, let's add "inept" as a third possibility: he might have been repeating them idly; or he might have been misquoted and forgotten to mention in his defense that he was misquoted.)
On the other hand, it would be great to have a Massachusetts senator with real lobstering experience, so if you want to vote for Ed, go ahead.
GOVERNOR'S COUNCIL: Michael J Callahan vs Roseann Trionfi-Mazzuchelli
(What is the Governor's Council, you ask?) Callahan is the incumbent, and has no website that I can find. Roseann Trionfi-Mazzuchelli (hereinafter "RTM") is the challenger, and has a website that doesn't even appear on the first page of google results for her own name... largely, it would seem, because she didn't put her name in it any prominent way. So we're off to a good start. Some of the positions I can find on RTM's website seem to be what a sensible legal person would consider "batshit" : term limits for judges most of all[*][**]. She makes numerous accusations against Callahan (that he's a rubber stamp, that he takes donations he shouldn't, and that he approves nominations he shouldn't), but doesn't actually link to any independently confirmable evidence for them. Some of her stated opinions are a bit contradictory: she says that Callahan's bad for approving the nominations of judges who "have no experience for the position", but she also says "Let’s explore the idea of accepting non-lawyers with real world experience and a connection to the public to the bench. " Perhaps, I wonder, the candidates that Callahan approved had "real world experience" rather than legal experience? I can't tell, because her website doesn't say who she's talking about. In an amusing footnote, she faults Callahan for voting to approve judicial nominees who allow jurors to dress in Halloween costumes.
At this point, you might be noticing that I've said very little about Callahan, and you'd be right. I can't find out much about him beyond a few news articles, and stuff related to his state senate run from a few years ago. He didn't impress me as a wonderful candidate either. RTM does have a point about not accepting campaign contributions from nominees or their friends in the legal trade; Callahan's last opponent made this point too. And every candidate, for every public office anywhere, should get himself or herself a website. Honestly, I'd vote against this guy if the challenger had made a better impression. But I'm afraid the challenger has managed to make a worse impression than Callahan's, so Callahan will probably get my vote. (I'd vote for nobody, or write in "Bill the Cat", if not for the notes below.)
[*] Term limits for judges without reappointment, like RTM seems to want ("They should serve one 8-year term and go back to private practice"), are IMO a poor idea for two reasons. First, they mean that no judge will have more than 8 years of experience as a judge. Second, they mean that many judges will need to spend their terms planning for their futures, and making decisions in order to further their long-term interests. The legally knowledgeable people I've talked to about these matters call RTM's proposals "scary."
[**] Note that many of Trionfi-Mazzuchelli's positions do not seem to be within the purview of the governor's council at all. Unless I greatly misunderstand how Massachusetts works, I don't think that the GC have authority to increase minimum sentences or enact term limits: I believe minimum sentences are set by the legislature, and term limits would seem to require an amendment to Chapter III, Article I of our fine Constitution. Thus, her less sensible priorities may be like those of the city council candidate you get in every election who runs on a platform of nuclear nonproliferation, balancing the federal budget, and returning the country to the gold standard. This might be pandering; it might be an unrealistic idea of what the GC's powers really are; or it might be that I've got the commonwealth all misunderstood.
(edited to add: Oh yes, one more thing. If I'm wrong, please tell me so by tomorrow morning, before I go vote. I can listen as well as pontificate, and I don't really know much more than I found out online in the past week or so.)
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01:10 pm
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Apparently, Boston driving can be a force for good
Today, when crossing the Charles River at the Science Museum, I saw the SUV ahead of me do a crazy turn to the right, blocking three lanes of traffic so that some pedestrians could safely complete the second half of their jaywalk.
It seems that Bostonian driving, in addition to its ordinary self- and mayhem-serving applications, can also be used to help one's fellow citizen and commit random acts of kindness. Who knew?
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10:04 am
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Mischief^WMatrimony managed
I am now married, and to seborn no less! The wedding was incredible, and I am still full of bouncy glee! Thanks to everybody who came, everyone who helped, and the whole world for being so beautiful! We'll probably post more once we're back from our 2-day micro-honeymoon to our Undisclosed Location. (We reserve the right to take a macro-honeymoon at a future date.)
BTW, if you brought us a lovely stained-glass picture frame, a sushi set with flowers (chrysanthemums?) on it, or a sake set, please drop us an email and let us know who you are. It seems that your cards became separated from your gifts during our Hasty Retreat from the reception.
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03:00 pm
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The Metropolis Drinking Game
In a more culturally enlightened vein, here's a drinking game for Fritz Lang's classic silent SF film, Metropolis.
Here be Metropolis spoilers.
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02:35 pm
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Zardoz, the Drinking Game
I wrote this a while ago. I am so sorry.
Minor Zardoz spoilers follow.
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02:59 pm
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Go to Bobby from Boston.
If you visit Boston, and wear guys' clothing, you should visit Bobby From Boston in the South End. It's a tremendously excellent vintage menswear store, and the proprietor is a great human being, and they don't seem to mind when you try on all the shoes and dig through all the boxes full of cufflinks to find the perfect pair.
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05:28 pm
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The stuff that fanfic is made of.
What does the resemblance between the Architect, the White Guardian, and Harland Sanders imply about their respective universes?
Unifying the Architect and the White Guardian is pretty easy: both are know-it-all embodiments of order and exposition. But what of the Colonel? What role does fried chicken play in the underpinnings of our space time? The eleven secret archons of the universe: does each correspond to a secret herb or spice?
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