A week on Harbor Island

So, despite threat of Swine Influenza... I'm on the non-left coast for the week... at the peach colored house in the middle here:

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The panorama from the back porch:The view from the front porch:


The wildlife out here is something else. "The beach is a buffet... and everyone's on the menu." We could see everything from the Osprey carrying off fish... the dolphins and sharks churning up the surf... the pelicans and ?herons? smacking into the water... pale white ghost crabs scuttling around at night... and the horseshoe crab mating season. (photo borrowed from my cousin Sam).

Tea for 2

Happy FOX syndicated "TEA bag day". Snort. A few hundred people gathered in Boston... and small groups of loyal FOX ditto-heads around the country. Woot.

Kind of pale in comparison to the 80,000+ that gathered in San Diego in protest to Prop 8 passing and other cities. But anyway.

Neologasm of the day: Astroturf. A false 'grass roots' uprising.

Random rantage: There's a rash of 'pro-(traditional/exclusive)-family" videos appearing lately. Far from the worst but the most infamous of which starts with "A storm is coming..." and goes downhill from there.

Over and over folks are decrying that their religious freedoms are being threatened by gay marriage. Best counter argument I've heard yet:

Some churches WANT to perform same-sex marriage... but LAW forbids it in most states. Now.. whose religious freedoms are under attack here? Really?

Tea bagging

Apparently there are a bunch of people planning to hold a 'tea party' on April 15 because they object to bailouts and paying taxes. I won't link to the right-wing nutjobs frothing at the mouth over it.... but I will re-post my comment on their follow-up thread:

Mad at taxes?

Demand that we reduce the stupid wasteful size of our bloated military - and demand we return to peacetime operations with a smaller standing force.

Think about it.... the bail out money is a small fraction compared to how much the U.S. has wasted by "helping" Iraq in a foolish and failed neocon attempt at empire building. The chief goal of which seemed to be helping their war-profiteering defense-inc buddies.

Those money that should have been going into making America an stronger economic force to be reckoned with.... into schools - scholarships - universities - R&D - etc.

So be glad you have to pay taxes... at least you're making money. Unlike the growing number of jobless people running up credit card debts just to pay their mortgages.

Please... if you can afford it... go have your stupid tea. Maybe some people in need will get hired to clean up after you. (which some of you will be paying for out of the interest your late tax payments. How generous of you.)

More than he asked for...

I'll be nice and not reveal the name of the person who asked me this in Second Life(tm) today. (chat posted without permission from the other party).

From "A curious resident": Heya jopsy, if your not busy, can you make a script for me, im to lazy to figure it out myself atm. If you can, all i want is it to generate keys starting from NULL_KEY to all z's. Not that hard but i can't think of a way to script it to change all the places of the key, and yea, all keys range from 0 to z each letter.
oh, and it must start at the end of the key and work it's way back to the start (end to index 0)

TRANSLATION: I want the secret unique name for EVERYTHING in Second Life, and every possible name for content that hasn't yet been created too. Every image/texture, person, group, object, sound clip, ... everything. (I'm guessing he wants this so he browse through other people's content and use it without their permission)

I initially replied with: May I ask what you intend to do with these keys?


Regardless of what he replies with... this is the answer he's about to get:


For starters... The list you're asking for is about 10 billion times larger than necessary. (Digits in keys only go up to F, not to Z)

Since each digit has 16 possible digits, and there's 32 digits, your list will have 16^32 keys in it, easy math.

Of course, 16^32, is just a simple, non-scary way of saying: 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456
(that's more than 340 "Undecillion" keys. I had to look the word up, actually.)

If you have 100 scripts, each generating 100 keys every second... your list will be done in 107,902,830,708,060 BILLION CENTURIES.

On the positive side, after we've left Earth and it's been consumed by our sun after it goes supernova, maybe we'll have technology that will store that much data.

So anyway. You still want that script?

(I could have just said "no", but where's the fun in that.)

P.S. He replied... and is trying to write something so that he obtain a resident's key from their name. (which is actually probably the only partially legit possible use for something like this.) I softened the message slight upon delivery. ;)

Pillar of Salt

I'm no biblical scholar... but I recognize exaggeration and cover-up when I see it.

The story of Lot in Genesis (wikipedia) is about the nephew of Abraham. Because of quarrels between Abraham's and Lot's shepards, Lot moves his family and business to Zoar (which is soon destroyed along Sodom & Gomorrah and two other cities). Lot persuades angels to spend the night in his house instead of on the street... and when the depraved of the town came to his door to 'meet' (original word sometimes translates as 'rape' apparent) the angels... Lot offers them his daughters instead. The townsfolk weren't interested. Hmm. In thanks, the angels warn Lot the city would be destroyed, and they should flee and not look back. He flees with his two daughters and wife. The wife looks back, turns to pillar of salt. Later his daughters get their father drunk, sleep with him and get pregnant, giving birth to sons. Sons that later become patriarchs of the nations of Moab and Ammon.

Um. Riiiiiiight.

How about this interpretation:

Lot moves into a new town and sets up business pimping out attractive young men and women. Not content with that, he and his hustlers engaged in theft and other illicit activities. Conflict and trouble with the authorities soon follows. Lot's crew sets fire the town and escapes during the chaos. There likely was no wife to turn into a pillar of salt. Lot retires in the mountains with two of his prostitutes. The greedy young hustlers decide to move on to another city, where the cycle of theft and arson continues until they're caught or disband.

And that bit about Lot's daughters' incest fathering the patriarchs of Moab and Ammon? Just mudslinging against neighbor nations.

In the news

I couldn't watch the whole thing, it was just awful.

California Supreme Court appears likely to uphold gay marriage ban - from the Mercury News - in brief, Ken Star (defending prop 8) was slick and articulate.... Christoper Krueger, the senior deputy assistant attorney general (challenging prop 8) was incoherent and acting like he'd never spoke in public before.

Justice Joyce Kennard nailed why they'll likely not decide in favor of the challenge: "opponents of the measure would have the court choose between 'two rights ... the inalienable right to marry and the right of the people to change the constitution as they see fit"

Which goads me to ask, what the fricking hell do we have justices for if they will not stand up against changes to law and constitution that are UNJUST.

Without the direct involvement of the judicial branch of government, the democratic process is no better than a lynch mob with a paper trail.

Magic and Betrayal

Bear with me as I bring this up... again... to say something a little different.

CA's supreme court is in the process of reviewing the legality of Prop 8... and my mind is drawn back to the topic.

First off, a very minor point, I marvel at the 'magic trick' being pulled by the dogmatic types. They cry out that their religious freedoms are being threatened... and demand censorship of all things gay. Imposing religious oppression is not one of the freedoms enshrined in the constitution last I checked.

The Gung-ho Prop 8 supporters are fighting to preserve their right to pretend that homosexuality is some exotic addictive sinful vice like heroin. The moderates, (people that likely voted for Prop 8 on a whim), are more likely to feel that they just don't want homosexuality paraded about in front of children. (I wouldn't want children seeing heterosexuality in practice either.)

Ask any straight guy what they think of two guys having sex, and they'll probably look disgusted. A reaction not unlike the one you'd get if you asked them what they think of their own aging parents having sex, actually. Funny that.

The cornerstone issue for me is this: Appeasing the homophobes by pretending to be straight is wrong.

Pretending is, at best, a temporary thing. The truth inevitably comes out. When it does, people feel betrayed, lied to, respect and trust severed, and in some cases marriages ruined.) The usual daytime soap drama... but with real lives destroyed instead.

In a world where people talk freely about their wives or husbands... gays remain silent and pretend to be single (if they aren't)... or claim to have opposite-sex partner (if they don't). Lying to friends, family, co-workers puts one constantly at risk of exposure, blackmail, extortion... even attack and retribution.

Not to mention the self-loathing that results in leading a duplicitous life.

The lying and betrayal of trust done by those that feel they must pretend to be normal is (in my strongly held opinion) THE root cause for all the other self-destructive things attributed to the so-called "gay lifestyle".

So, pretending that sexual orientation is "no one's business"... or relying on "Don't ask don't tell" merely makes matters worse, not just for gays but for the people who will some day find out they were lied to.

And... without State and Federal recognition of gay marriage, people will be compelled to lie to be successful in society... and others will continue to have the "Freedom" to blackmail and attack them merely for being different.

Not necessarily the kinds of freedoms our founding fathers had in mind either.