Category: Culture

Roaming the afterlife

A dead Malaysian ran up a $218 trillion cell phone bill and people are mystified:

A Malaysian man who paid off a $23 wireless bill and disconnected his late father’s cell phone back in January has been stiffed for subsequent charges on the closed account, MSNBC has reported. Telekom Malaysia sent Yahaya Wahab a bill for 806,400,000,000,000.01 ringgit, or about $218 trillion, for charges to the account, along with a demand from the company’s debt collection agency that he settle the alleged debt within 10 days, or get a lawyer.

It’s actually very simple. Dead people can communicate with the living through the simple mechanism of Electronic Voice Phenomena, documented in the movie White Noise, by leaving recored messages. They’ve apparently figured out that cell phones are way cooler than voice recorders, and they’ve all been having a ball calling living friends and relatives and shooting the breeze. As these calls come from an area with exceptionally high roaming charges, the bill seems high, by living human standards. Which is just another example of what a limited perspective we have on stuff.

Two Degrees of Douglas Adams

Richard Dawkins dedicated The God Delusion to Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Adams introduced Dawkins to Lalla Ward, the former actress to whom Dawkins is now married. Adams and Ward knew each other from working together at Doctor Who, where Adams was a script editor and writer and Ward was the magic princess of the planet Atrios and the second incarnation of Time Lord Romana.

Adams also co-wrote a sketch for Monty Python’s Flying Circus (episode 42, A Party Political Broadcast on Behalf of the Liberal Party.) Go forth and impress others with your grasp of trivia.

For extra credit, Ward was briefly married to Doctor Who number four Tom Baker, hence Doctor Who and Dawkins are spiritually connected three different ways.

Whaddup, bitches?

I won’t be able to say that in New York if this law passes:

The New York City Council, which drew national headlines when it passed a symbolic citywide ban earlier this year on the use of the so-called n-word, has turned its linguistic (and legislative) lance toward a different slur: bitch.

The term is hateful and deeply sexist, said Councilwoman Darlene Mealy of Brooklyn, who has introduced a measure against the word, saying it creates “a paradigm of shame and indignity” for all women.

Somebody should bitch-slap Councilwoman Mealy before she embarrasses her momma again.

This is a fine example of slippery slopes in action. The Council banned the use of the “n-word”, so why shouldn’t they ban the “b-word” as nearly as offensive? And then “fatty” because it’s nearly as offensive as “bitch”, and then “retard”, and then “dullard”, and then “not exactly a genius”. Why not ban all the words in the English language, on the grounds that each one can hurt somebody’s feelings if used in the right context?

Then New Yorkers, who used to be the freest people in the world until they started banning smoking in bars and fast food and hard words, will just sit in their many corners banging their heads against their many walls and moaning, almost imperceptibly, about the abject emptiness of their lives.

The bitches.

Good Tomato Sauce

People are doing interesting things with food these days. Researchers in Ohio have devised some new varieties of tomato by combining heirloom varieties with disease-resistant modern varieties, and in the process dramatically raised the content of usable lycopene. It’s all in this American Chemical Society Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry article, Carotenoid Absorption in Humans Consuming Tomato Sauces Obtained from Tangerine or High–Carotene Varieties of Tomatoes

Tomato sauces were produced from unique tomato varieties to study carotenoid absorption in humans. Tangerine tomatoes, high in cis-lycopene, especially prolycopene (7Z,9Z,7’Z,9’Z), and high–carotene tomatoes as an alternative dietary source of -carotene were grown and processed… Lycopene dose-adjusted triacylglycerol-rich lipoprotein AUC responses in the tangerine sauce group were relatively high when compared to those in the literature and the high–carotene group. The results support the hypothesis that lycopene cis-isomers are highly bioavailable and suggest that special tomato varieties can be utilized to increase both the intake and bioavailability of health-beneficial carotenoids.

This press release from the USDA touts their losing tomato:

USDA Agricultural Research Service scientist John R. Stommel developed the new high beta-carotene tomato lines–97L63, 97L66 and 97L97–for use in processing into paste, juices and sauces. High beta-carotene cherry and beefsteak type market tomatoes will also be released as specialty tomatoes for the fresh market.

So the yokels in Ohio just kicked the USDA’s butt. Lycopene, in case you didn’t know, is something that old men should take for the prostate.

This is wrong

What are these wankers thinking?

Comedian Catherine Tate is to play Doctor Who’s new companion, reprising her role from the 2006 Christmas special, the BBC has announced.

She will join David Tennant for the complete 13-week run of the new series of Doctor Who, which is due to begin filming in Cardiff later this month.

What an outrage. Am I bovvered? Damn right.

Adobe software on Linux

This is the first in a series on things that don’t work right.

Fedora 7 is the latest release of Linux in the Red Hat line. It includes the 2.6.21 kernel, which has kernel-resident KVM virtual machine support, Firefox 2, and the latest versions of the Gnu toolchain and all that. It’s the first Linux that’s seemed to me like a credible alternative to Windows for general-purpose desktop use, but it’s got some problems. My first shot at installation was on an Asrock ConRoe1333-DVI/H R2.0 motherboard, which uses an Intel chipset and has on-board video with DVI, in the form of the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950. Intel is alleged to be super-supportive of open source, so I expected this configuration to work even though it breaks the one-year rule (never install Linux on hardware less than one year old.) Installation was smooth, but when the system booted I got a black screen.

So no problem, I put Windows on that machine and moved on to an MSI K9AGM2-FIH motherboard. Like the Asrock, it has on-board video and support for a dual-core CPU, but it uses the AMD/ATI Radeon X1250 graphics controller. Both motherboards support HDCP so they’ll be usable with the new Blu-Ray drive from Pioneer that’s supposed to be here any day now. Installation on the MSI was easy, and unlike the Intel motherboard, it actually ran. The system doesn’t know what to do with the Radeon yet, but that’s another story.

As soon as you have an operating system, the next thing you want to do is get to the web, and that’s where things get interesting. Like most people, I use Adobe Acrobat and the Adobe Flash player, but neither of them is up to snuff for Linux.

Acrobat has a bug that makes it go hard loop on any computer with the latest version of GTK, one of the graphics libraries it uses. It’s a simple bug to fix, requiring a one-character change in the /usr/bin/acroread script, but Adobe hasn’t figured out how to do it and in fact has re-released the same bug several times. It’s simply a matter of changing this line:

echo $mfile| sed 's/libgtk-x11-\([0-9]*\).0.so.0.\([0-9]\)00.
\([0-9]*\)\|\(.*\)/\1\2\3/g'

to this line:

echo $mfile| sed 's/libgtk-x11-\([0-9]*\).0.so.0.\([0-9]*\)00.
\([0-9]*\)\|\(.*\)/\1\2\3/g'

Can you see the difference? right after the middle of the line there’s an extra ‘*’ after one of the [0-9]’s. That’s not too hard, is it? Of course not, any moron can fix that.

Now the situation with the Flash player is a little more interesting. These new AMD and Intel processors have 64-bit instructions, so Linux has both 32-bit versions and 64-bit versions. For most applications, supporting 64-bit Linux is simply a re-compile with the 64-bit flag turned on. This is too much for Adobe to handle, so they only offer Flash in a 32-bit version. Since this is the tool that plays YouTube, it seems like a nice thing to have. But what happens if you install the Flash plugin for Firefox on 64-bit Linux is interesting: Firefox doesn’t see it, and you’re nagged to install it again, and again, until your patience runs out.

It turns out the issue here is that Fedora 7 includes both the 32-bit and the 64-bit versions of Firefox, in different locations. The basic /usr/bin/firefox is a script, and it runs code out of /usr/lib or /usr/lib64 as appropriate. The Flash plugin goes into the 32-bit code library, but as you’re running the 64-bit code you never see it. So the solution is to erase Firefox from your system:

sudo yum erase firefox*

and install the 32-bit version only:

sudo yum install firefox.i386*

Then your Flash install will work (after you repeat it), but now you’ve got yet another problem, as all the plugins that have real 64-bit versions aren’t going to run, so you have to play more games to get things like Java running under a 32-bit plugin. …install a nice little wrapper that allows you to run 32-bit plugins under 64-bit binaries.

More on that later, but for now Adobe is officially inept at Linux.

Shape up, poor people

This column by Joe Queenan from the LA Times provides great, pragmatic advice for the poor. If you know any poor people, pass it on:

In a world bristling with such sexy topics as the latest exploits of predatory hedge funds and lupine private equity firms, why would anyone want to write about the poor, who never do anything that is even vaguely exotic? In a world filled with flashy megalomaniacs including Paris Hilton, Mark Cuban, Tom Cruise and Madonna, why would anyone want to read about glamourless screw-ups living in public housing at Cabrini-Green?

…For society to function properly, there must be a top, a middle and a bottom. Otherwise, economic mobility ceases, stasis sets in and a society starts to die. The problem in the United States today is that fewer and fewer young people are emotionally equipped to handle the enormous responsibility of being poor, and those who do choose to remain poor are not holding up their end of the bargain by leading desperate lives suffused with quiet dignity, thus serving as shining beacons for the rest of us.

In 2007, the United States finds itself at a moral and demographic crossroads. It cannot expect the upper class to provide strong moral leadership because the upper class is filled with people who work for Halliburton. It cannot expect the middle class to assume that burden because the middle class has always suffered from a certain moral flabbiness as a result of commuting long distances to jobs they hate. Realistically, only the poor are in a position to provide inspiration to the rest of us because they have the most time on their hands.

Still, for the poor to return to those halcyon days when Tom Joad was idolized by millions, the poor are going to need to undergo a classwide makeover. For the underclass to get back to the point at which society actually honors them, appreciates them and seeks out their advice on salt-of-the-earth issues, the poor are going to have to shape up.

Indeed.

Sanjaya Rips America Apart

Here’s an example of the damage Sanjaya Malakar is doing to America:

Way out West, the bizarre Sanjaya Malakar/”American Idol” drama is tearing at the fabric of a once-strong bond between friends and former teammates.

After Dan Haren was traded to the A’s in December 2004, he found a mentor and soulmate of sorts in then-Oakland ace Barry Zito. Now Zito is with the Giants, and the two aren’t just on opposite sides of San Francisco Bay. They’re on opposite sides of the Howard Stern-led movement to “vote for the worst” — i.e., the musical car wreck that is Sanjaya.

“I voted for him 50 times,” Haren said during the final week of Spring Training.

Told of his buddy’s vow to help make a mockery of the “Idol” process, Zito fired off a classic, indignant text message that read, “Unreal. These people want to prove that it is a joke, but it only is when people like them are dishonest in voting. So they’re proving that dishonesty skews it. Congratulations.”

Responded Haren: “I just want to see [Sanjaya] get a record contract.”

The once-great Zito is in the twilight of his career over there on the wrong side of the bay, and it’s sad to see his mind going soft like this. Get that boy some fish oil.

Meanwhile, back in golden Oakland, rookie Travis Buck has just hit a triple to lead off the fifth inning in a game where the A’s trail the White Sox 1-0. A’s fans are excited, knowing that a man on third with nobody out has a 93% chance of scoring. But Mark Ellis and Jason Kendall ground out weakly to the pitcher and Shannon Stewart files out to right and the A’s come away with nothing. Buck is probably thinking: “send me back to Triple A ball, these m!@#er f$%&ing geezers stink so bad I don’t want to get any on me.”

Game-ending Domer
But it’s a big, fat, setup. Fast forward to the bottom of the ninth, with the score tied thanks to a three clutch singles by the A’s and Buck coming to the plate. This guy is a rookie and the league leader in strikeouts, but Crazy Ozzie don’t care ’bout the numbers, he gives him an intentional walk, loading the bases. And up comes Mark “weakly hit ground ball to the pitcher” Ellis, who proceeds to bounce one off the left field fence, then off Scott Podsednik’s head, and then onto the outfield grass. The A’s win.

That’s good for baseball.

The Chicago papers show the White Sox GM to be a bit of a prophet:

“…if we play well, we’re in the ballgames, and if we give ourselves a chance to come out of these first few weeks .500 … we get some guys starting off well and their confidence grows, we’re going to be really special.

And I’m seeing some of that, especially with the bullpen. I mean, we can still go out there and blow up against Oakland because you’re not going to have success every day.”

Indeed.

Buy this dress

Either you or someone you know needs to own the sophisticated yet whimsical slip mentioned in the final paragraph:

Leontine opened in November on a cobbled lane in the rapidly redeveloping wilds of the South Street Seaport. Down here, foot traffic is minimal, and last week the snow lay crisp along the sidewalks. Perhaps this accounts for the Sleeping Beauty aspect that struck me immediately on stepping into Leontine’s cavernous white chandelier-hung space.

“Yeah, the last couple of months have been pretty cold and lonely,” Virginia Loughnan, a sales assistant, confirmed, drawing her little knitted shrug around her slim shoulders. “But hopefully with the warmer weather. … We’re going to sell fresh-cut flowers.”

Leontine, like its West Village sister stores, Albertine and Claudine (the three are named for the maids in “Bonjour Tristesse”), sells a mix of vintage and contemporary jewelry, accessories and clothing by hard-to-find designers. Cécile, the heroine of “Bonjour Tristesse,” is an indulged and sexually precocious 17-year-old, on the cusp between child and woman, and this is a fitting description of the aesthetic informing most of the clothing on Leontine’s wrought-iron racks.

…Miranda Bennett worked in Ms. Lee’s shops before introducing her label, and her sleeveless black moiré slip with a ruffled Empire waist ($400) balanced sweetness with a knowing sophistication.

In New York, go to Leontine, and outside see Miranda Bennett Design. Buy now and nobody gets hurt.