32 degrees of the planet Earth

Judith S. Kleinfeld has researched Stanley Milgram's famous "Six Degrees of Separation" theory and found no real supporting evidence but made some other interesting observations along the way in Could It Be A Big World Afterall?.

The idea that people are connected through just "six degrees of separation," based on Stanley Milgram's "small world study," has become part of the intellectual furniture of educated people. New evidence discovered in the Milgram papers in the Yale archives, together with a review of the literature on the "small world problem," reveals that this widely-accepted idea rests on scanty evidence. Indeed, the empirical evidence suggests that we actually live in a world deeply divided by social barriers such as race and class.

Kleinfeld also raises the question about the internet and its questionable 'global village' metaphor. Does the internet really make you part of something or does it just let you stay-away closer?

People in the western world have been told for over a hundred years, he points out, that technology is making the world smaller and what we have witnessed instead is people banding together along ethnic bloodlines with bloody consequences as in the Middle East and the Balkans. Could our coming together through technology have had the unintended consequence of driving us apart? Cultural groups may set up psychological boundaries when geographic boundaries slip away.

But are 'psychological boundaries' forged on the aether something that brings people closer together? I really don't know but I do worry about the continuing 'bunkering' of the population where you only leave the house for groceries and work. The world in my burbclave seems very non-interactive.

The world isn't small, we are.

permalink Ω 28 February 2002, Helsinki

Kalevalan päivä

Today is Kalevala Day in Finland. The Kalevala is the Finnish national epic full of myth and symbol like every other epic where guys look manly and virile and women are angels or evil seductresses. A lesser known companion, The Kanteletar tells more of the women's stories. Since Aku Ankka or Donald Duck is so popular in Finland perhaps Disney would be interested in making the Kalevala into a movie starring Donald Duck :)

It is ironic that the day celebrating a symbol of national identity would also mark the demise of another, the Markka.

permalink Ω 28 February 2002, Helsinki

Biopunk barfbag

I remember when the internet was the new craze in town and I resented much of the fuss since suddenly my little dark corner of the planet was hip and cool. Much of my life has been spent rooting for the underdog and avoiding the trendy. I'm elated to see the dot bomb come and people who used to believe their own press releases eat some humble pie and reenter reality.

So, when I read Genome Liberation an old familiar feeling welled up within me that had me reaching for the nearest barfbag. Biopunks my ass. I used to work in 'bioinformatics' before it became trendy by surving the economy after all the dot bombs went sneakers up and it sounds like the 'cyberpunks' are trying to refashion themselves as 'biopunks'. Some guy at ORAs Biocon last month had this idea that sounds like a rehashed internet startup idea made for bioinformatics:

Basically, you could make a Web site that just streams human genetic code at you," he says. "You can get your hands on all sorts of genomes now -- they're just giant text files of alphabet characters. You could pick your favorite chromosome, download it from the government and get one of those stock ticker programs to stream the genome instead of business information.

Wow, how incredibly stupid and useless that would be. I'll bet he'll get a couple million to waste on trying to make a go of it before filing for bankruptcy. Information doesn't want to be free biopunk boy, it wants to be filtered, analysed and made into something meaningful for your brain. A stream of raw data is useless and I could create a perl script that could spew random sequences for absolutely no cost and have about the same value.

I have no ethical or moral quibbles with genomic and other genetic research but I do have a serious problem with humans thinking that we're smart enough after 40 years of reasearch to build ourselves that which took millenia to evolve. The US ranks NUMBER ONE in lowest eighth-grade math scores out of a group of 20 industrialised nations and genomic research requires a decent education in biology, math and others. Just because we can sequence the DNA doesn't mean that we have any clue what to do with it. We don't need some 'biopunk' poseur, we need educated people who can do something useful with the data and hopefully make breakthroughs that will be handled in a humane and ethical way. If recent events are any measure though I an not optimistic that such things are possible and we will all pay dearly for buying bombs when we should have been building schools and laboratories.

Furthermore, since our government spends nearly ten times the amount on defense as it does on education or research, most universities where genomic/bioinformatics are a high priority have taken on corporate sponsorship due to lack of funding in the last 20 years or more. Whether this means that the information will be free or not remains to be seen but the genome sequence itself is not worth much, it is the analysis and subsequent knowledge and products that emerge from it that will be very highly guarded, patented and sold to the highest bidder.

A future like GATTACA is not so farfetched.

permalink Ω 27 February 2002, Helsinki

Welcome to the Veal World

I'm sitting here in my veal fattening pen cum cube mulling over how Carly Fiorina managed to get an alleged $70 million raise package after the merger even though she was voted #1 in a survey of CEOs who hurt the brand value of the companies they lead. I was sold to HP in an outsourcing deal and I'm still pretty unhappy about it since I still do the same job I did before only for HP and with nothing really left for me to do anymore. Well, I did make an account last week on one of my 4 remaining servers.

While this may seem like the perfect job to be the lost engineer it's really depressing as I'd rather be doing something interesting with my time but the job market isn't one I'd like to be in at the moment. I wish I had never left academia as though the pay was less than stellar I always had stuff to do and had much the same comfortable standard of living I have now. I realise now more than ever that I have been sucked into the world of Dilbert.

Thanks to your leadership, I've gone from being unmotivated to being inert. I think I'm advancing to the next phase. Hello, rigor mortis!! Take me, I'm ready!!

I just lost the subtle mental connection between my performance and my salary. I get paid the same amount no matter what I do. I can stand here and flick my fingers and still get paid. Do you realize what this means??!

For those of you happy in academia my advice is to stay there.

permalink Ω 27 February 2002, Helsinki

Stupid White Guys

Feeling like the news is really a satellite feed from the planet Mayberry these days? Well, it's time to run, not walk, to the bookshop and get a copy of Stupid White Men by Michael Moore who did Roger & Me. Ironically his cameraman for that film was a cousin of Dubya. How many cousins does Bush have as he seems to be related to the entire administration of Florida and Texas? Bill O'Reilly interviewed Moore and stayed on the ever so predictible if you aren't completely behind capitalism you must be a socialist line of reasoning which is wrong but it helps the capitalists justify outright theft as 'progress'. Enron is just a new form of progress! Go buy the book. I just wrote my congressmen and you will too.

permalink Ω 27 February 2002, Helsinki

Just Born Peeps

In the long line of quintessentially American foods behind Jell-O, Velveeta and SPAM lies the Marshmallow Peep. They used to only come around Easter time, which is March 31st this year, but they have expanded to be year 'round treats. The Just Born history details the little critters evolution. Even Martha Stewart has a Marshmallow treats kit so you can make your very own if you have lots of time and homemaking on your mind. Jarkko made me try herring in Finland so I'm working my way up to feeding him Velveeta by way of the peeps and I don't think Peeps would be a hit in Helsinki. :)

permalink Ω 27 February 2002, Helsinki

Noopy!

NVP is a BOFH who is a nice and welcome change to the programming crowd and his new journal makes me laugh a little too hard. This is unlike a lot of the coders journals who like to schwing about their modules or their l337 coding skills, Nate has a lot of funny and real experiences I can relate to. Bitchy sysadmin well beyond alt.sysadmin.recovery? This is for you :)

permalink Ω 26 February 2002, Helsinki

Church or state

The Americans United for Separation of Church and State has an interesting article on their opposition to the school voucher program.

permalink Ω 26 February 2002, Helsinki

Environmentally correct Bush

The American people haven't seemed all that concerned for the environment in the past 3 decades and presidents have not been crusaders for the environment either. Currently, we're back to the days of James Watt prospecting for resouces in national parks and other pristine wilderness because our current insatiable need for fuel outweighs the need to preserve anything for posterity. In light of more drilling, less fuel efficiency legislation and spending cuts on alternative fuel research I find it rather curious that the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas is amazingly ecofriendly. I get the feeling that Laura Bush was behind this and wonder what she thinks of George cutting the budget for libraries by $38 million or so just as she kicked off a national campaign for "America's Libraries".

permalink Ω 26 February 2002, Helsinki

Step right up

Ever look at a ladder and wonder who is responsible for the standards that govern how ladders are constructed and rated for safety? Well, the American Ladder Institute is here to help answer all your ladder concerns and questions. You can even order the ANSI ASC A 14 documents to fill your brain with even more wacky trivia to impress and bore your friends with. I'm tempted to order "the new-and-improved "Ladder Dude" Ladder Safety Teaching Unit" since it sounds like one of those films we had to endure in grade school and might be worth a good chuckle.

permalink Ω 26 February 2002, Helsinki

West Winger a Left Winger?

In a momentary lapse of homogeneity the wire has a story about the creator of West Wing Aaron Sorkin saying the US is pretending that Bush is competent and he makes an interesting point that it may be a comforting illusion in the wake of last year. I hope people wake up soon.

permalink Ω 25 February 2002, Helsinki

Robertson loses sense of irony

Pat Robertson today cast more FUD about Islam into the airwaves and white noise.

Robertson came under criticism last week when he described Islam as a violent religion that wants to dominate and then, if need be, destroy

Gee, that sounds like Christianity over the last 1500 years leaving a trail of death, destruction of native cultures and imperialism in it's wake.

permalink Ω 25 February 2002, Helsinki

Just execute them damn liberals!

This column made my jaw drop. Perhaps the next holocaust will be for the liberals and their kind.

We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too, pundit Ann Coulter told this month's meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors.

I was under the impression he was being tried for fighting with the Taleban not for being a liberal. I guess that's a crime worthy of death now too. Tom Tomorrow tries valiently to make this funny but it's so exposed that it's hard to laugh when you're a card carrying liberal.

permalink Ω 25 February 2002, Helsinki

Wireless to the people

Wireless has taken an excrutiatingly long time to finally catch on and now that it has it seems like everyone is talking about how it will 'revolutionise' our internet 'experience'. I've had broadband for 6 years and wireless for at least 3 of those years and I will admit that it's really nice to surf the net from the couch but I don't consider it to be liberating and, in fact, quite the opposite, especially when I see people in social situations like a restaurant or a bar pull out their laptop and start surfing. Maybe I'm goofy but I figure that if you're too busy to eat in a restaurant or drink at the pub without surfing you should probably just get take-away and go home. I'm no luddite but I have observed that a few social skills wouldn't hurt most of the people who really can't be without their laptop for more than 5 minutes not to mention it's very distracting when sitting in a pub with some guy typing like mad on the barrail when you just left yours at home to have a pint in computer-free peace. Perhaps segregating surfers from the non surfers like smokers will be a new trend to watch for.

Simon Garfinkel has an interesting column this month titled The Internet Amenity in which he advocates open wireless networks everywhere. He makes a good point that it would be easy, convenient and cheaper without firewalls and restrictions thus forcing people to be more reliant on host based security instead of relying on a firewall alone. However, he claims that it 'costs $x nothing' to supply this service and he loses me since the internet is not free. Machines, routers, people, etc. all of us who make the internet run cost money to someone and, while admittedly opening up your own home base stations for the neighborhood coffee shop isn't going to run ISPs out of business, the collective toll I suspect will have a very negative effect on providers and forcing us into even fewer choices. Securing hosts in an open network is also not a trivial expense for companies and universities considering just how far behind most IT departments are in both skilled staff and savvy users. While I don't disagree with the thought that wireless should be ubiquitous someday I think someone should be asking who is ultimately going to pay for it. This isn't some sort of feelgood wireless love-in Utopia where the homeless are fed because it would be cheaper to feed them than to dispose of the bodies and the wireless made free because it will make surfing from Starbuck's like, you know, totally possible.

permalink Ω 25 February 2002, Helsinki

Welcome to Earth

Paying taxes seems more worthwhile when it's something as cool as NASA's Blue Marble global imagery.

permalink Ω 25 February 2002, Helsinki

Pop, coke or soda?

Take this cool online survey of various regional Americanisms and then view the results when you are done...it may surprise you :)

permalink Ω 25 February 2002, Helsinki

Bill does a combover

Snuggles TV because I have evil friends :)

permalink Ω 25 February 2002, Helsinki

thighs could care

In a trip down memory lane while cleaning out ye olde inboxe I ran across an email with the following poem written for me by a #perl psycho named Teratogen. While not originial in his psychosis, he was pretty creepy and hilarious at the same time. :) Wherever you are teratogen I hope you are getting some good drugs and psychotherapy.

*Teratogen* I never believed
*Teratogen* that breasts could plead
*Teratogen* was not aware
*Teratogen* that thighs could care
*Teratogen* never knew the touch of cool fire
*Teratogen* or that love could be
*Teratogen* so full of fury
*Teratogen* and yet so tender
*Teratogen* until you came to me
*Teratogen* on the eve of spring
*Teratogen* when the air was laden
*Teratogen* with the fragrance of rain
*Teratogen* and the scent of the wildflowers woven
*Teratogen* in your raven hair
*Teratogen* ‹fin›
*Teratogen* =)
*Teratogen* see?
*Teratogen* it wasn't that bad
*Teratogen* =)

permalink Ω 25 February 2002, Helsinki

Get your Verne On

The book, then the movie of the same title, Journey to the Center of the Earth I was hooked on Jules Verne and his stories. Lately his books have been coming back into print. Most recently, Magellania, a story of a man whose motto is Neither God nor master, he has shunned Western civilisation to live on an island where it gets complicated by immigrants who want in on his utopia. This is the first time the book has been published, in it's original form, in English. The Modern Library also recently published The Mysterious Island which is based on the Selkirk of Selkirk's Island who was the model for Robinson Crusoe. Many others have come back into print recently as well; Adventures in the Land of the Behemoth, Dropped from the Clouds, The Chase of the Golden Meteor and Paris in the Twentieth Century.

permalink Ω 24 February 2002, Helsinki

9/11 makes it into the dictionary

While the OED is doubtful that the events of last September will have a lasting effect on American English the 4th Edition of the American Heritage College Dictionary, due out in April, will carry an entry for 9/11 among others. The NYT has a nice article today, 9/11 Words go from Coffee Shops to Dictionaries. I wonder if 'chad' made it in as well.

permalink Ω 24 February 2002, Helsinki

The Veal World

If the movie Clockwatchers left you feeling depressed about your own dull cubicle world then the Sharktank Redemption, a spoof of Shawshank Redemption, should cheer you up. Haiku Tunnel and Office Space will make for an uplifting double feature as well :)

permalink Ω 23 February 2002, Helsinki

Here's a shocker

Try to contain your shock and amazment but Dubya is back on the campaign trail to destroy an arctic wildlife preserve to generate more jobs and theoretically reduce our need for foreign oil. What a load of baloney as since when did giving people more of something make them conserve and hold precious the surplus? I should consider joining Greenpeace. Only idiots would think this is a good idea since wilderness and our environment is a non-renewable and non-replaceable resource. Apparently Capitol Hill has no shortage of idiots.

permalink Ω 23 February 2002, Helsinki

Nuke 'em

In an astonishingly stupid move the US has decide to erase a 24-year pledge to not use nuclear weapons on people who don't have the same capabilities. Translation: We'll be able to make the rubble of Afghanistan glow in the dark now too.

permalink Ω 23 February 2002, Helsinki

Spin is in

The US is looking to a 66 year old female Texan to change the perception that the US is more than just a bunch of terroristic thugs.

She got me to buy Uncle Ben's rice, says Colin Powell. Perhaps the new secret campaign will be to get all the terrorists in the world to buy Uncle Ben's rice for dinner...sure beats pop tarts.

permalink Ω 23 February 2002, Helsinki

Well, at least it isn't a Speedo....

First we had Ashcroft draping the boobied art deco statues in the Hall of Justice and now there is an inane scuffle over George W. Bush and his Family Paper Dolls created by the same guy who did George Bush and His Family Paper Dolls because it shows our president in 'gender appropriate undergarments'. I guess they noticed the sex toys section at the back for Laura. I hate to think it just can't get any more retarded in this country as I'm sure there are plenty of surprises left in the 315 days remaining before I escape.

permalink Ω 21 February 2002, Helsinki

The Earl of Grey or Gray

I'm reading a new book from Knopf A is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States and it is an intriguing exploration of Language, in this case English, and its possible role in national identity. The EU has 15 languages that it provides translators and translations for since language is very much a part of national identity, moreso than their respective currencies. So, when the colonies gave the British Empire the shove Noah Webster of later dictionary fame was a vocal advocate of making an American language to give the young country a sense of identity. Hebrew was briefly considered as was French to spite the British but English won in the end due to practicality in spite of the fact that only 1 in 4 people spoke English as a first language. In contrast 230 million [ 1990 ] americans of whom 199 million speak only English as of the 1990 census. We can blame Noah Webster for all the seemingly absurd differences in spelling between US and UK English since he felt it would make the language 'our own'. It's a pity he took so much effort in affecting this change since the spelling differences have become just an annoyance and the culture of both countries has provided more than enough differences in the language to make them distinct.

I was never very keen on US history as 200 years doesn't make racist, egotistical, rich white guys any more interesting than they are in the present . However, much to the authors credit she has written a very readable and interesting tale of American history and some of the early influences on American English. She even tells the oft forgotten story of Sequoyah who invented the Cherokee alphabet to help liberate his people as well as Gallaudet [ sign language ], Morse [ morse code ], and Bell [ speech ]. I still don't think I'd like most of the forefathers if they showed up for tea but I wish more history textbooks were written this well.

permalink Ω 20 February 2002, Helsinki

Pink Pirates

History has been notorious over the centuries of overlooking women and their contributions to science and other fields even though some justice is being done in new biographies there are scores of other women whom history forgot to pay tribute to. Yesterday at the local bookshop I spied Booty: Girl Pirates on the High Seas which tells the story of a number of female pirates one of whom was the last person hanged in the state of Massachussetts for the crime of highway robbery....her name was Rachel Wall. It gives me hope for history becoming a bit more accurate in the future when publishers are willing to print books about the bitchy captain hooks of the seven seas that I don't ever recall reading about in history textbooks. :)

permalink Ω 19 February 2002, Helsinki

From Vanuatu with payment and postage

I made the mistake when I was a freshman in University, while at home on christmas holiday watching the 4am creature feature bored and unable to sleep after staying awake for a week during exams, of taking up smoking for it's soporific effects. I, like many of my addicted comrades, believe it is a habit easily kicked through force of will. I think we delude ourselves since smoking is passe and we'd be more hip if we were addicted to something more fashionable like painkillers. I quit for a week last summer and the first one I lit up in my failure felt like John Travolta looked in Pulp Fiction while driving the car high on heroin and it was something of a revelation in that moment just how powerful the drug known as nicotine really is and how it would require something more than just determination to walk away.

My sister told me about Zyban/Wellbutrin since she quit smoking with its help and recommended it. The health plan I have doesn't cover smoking cessation and I've not been to a doctor in years since it's generally a pain in the ass to figure out how to actually use the system. I went surfing on the net one afternoon to do a little research on the drug after hearing more people say that Zyban did the trick for them and I found a web site that claimed to sell this magical substance sans prescription. I figured why not try it and, after finding that a loophole in the law allows these companies to legally import prescription only drugs to individuals for private use, I ordered an 8-week supply. The package arrived today from Vanuatu bearing a diamond shaped postage stamp with a funky Easter Islandesque tiki thingy and a space satellite flying overhead with a customs form declaring the contents as 'health products'. :)

So, I'm a little nervous as I've not taken anything stronger than Advil in the last 20 years and I'd really like to succeed this time around. The side effects of the drug don't sound too shabby though as, if I am to believe the brochure, I should be thin and randy as well as smoke-free soon :)

permalink Ω 19 February 2002, Helsinki

beeer is my hero :)

Right after Christmas we replaced the hme card in the 2nd search.cpan box due to a really high number of TCP retransmissions in spite of tuning the box and trying other ways to nail down the problem. Initially after replacing the network card the problem subsided but returned again about a week later. Ben Hockenhull caught up with me on #perl earlier today and asked me if I was still seeing the same behaviour as he had found something rather odd on the network....and it would appear the problem has been solved :) This brings me great relief as I was already considering shipping him a new box to replace the current one in lieu of wasting a lot of time tracking down the problem with the box remotely. THANK YOU BEN! :) So you may notice the search engine being a bit zippier now. :)

permalink Ω 15 February 2002, Helsinki

PURL THIS

I really don't like Valentine's Day and haven't since my 5th grade teacher decided to make giving valentines a classroom event. I made a lovely box for the whole production and since I was the teachers nerdy pet I, of course, received no valentines. The other nerdy kid in class got one from me since I made one for everyone and thus we became the nerd squad of St. Geek's. Lately #perl has taken to bitter candy hearts by stuffing purl and there's even one site where you can make your own candy hearts if you can't order the bittersweets from despair, Inc.

Last year for TPC Gnat and I were going to have a bunch of fortune cookies made with little perly fortunes in them but the bitter perly hearts have some real potential. It is an art to cram a message into 2 lines and 8 characters and I had a bit too much fun last night playing with the heartmaker.

• AMO ID for Damian [ I had this as a vanity license plate on my old beetle years ago...:)]
• THNX APLD :) hee
• AS IF
• BOT LUV for purl
• CORE DUMP
• FORK BOMB
• HTH HAND for Rootbeer :)
• HP SUX it does
• JAPH ME
• KILL -9
• MOI MOI goodbye in Finnish :)
• OR DIE
• SHE BANG
• USE CPAN

<aevil> bitter candy heart
<purl> DIE PIGFUCKER
<aevil> LUV U PURL

Today my 'Forgotten English' calendar has the word rotten logging which was "a term used when romantic couples sit on a log by moonlight to court" and is a rather amusing choice of words on this Hallmark Holiday.

permalink Ω 14 February 2002, Helsinki

Ad astra per alia porci

I really despise the idiots who write little perl scripts to crawl the living *beep*beep*beep* out of search.cpan.org as they completely ignore the robots.txt and bring the server to its knees forcing me to put explicit 'deny' directives in the httpd.conf. I don't understand why people do this and find it especially irritating when they keep on hammering the website even after all they receive is a 403. I've found 5 in the last few days doing this so if this shoe fits, please find another hobby...soon. I think I'm going to have to create a rather explicit 403 page so maybe they'll get the hint. Sometimes, it takes a hammer and a blowtorch.

The book of the day is Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck. Charley is a poodle who accompanies Steinbeck on a road trip around the US in 1961. Even if you hated the Grapes of Wrath you'll likely enjoy this travelogue which has been republished by Penguin in honor of the Centennial of Steinbeck's birth.

permalink Ω 13 February 2002, Helsinki

Life is in the details

A couple of years ago I read an article in Smithsonian Magazine titled Reading the Message in Everyday Things about John R. Stilgoe, a professor at Harvard University who teaches classes and writes books about things we completely take for granted and often escape our notice. I was immediately intrigued and read his books Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places and Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820-1938 to find out more about this man and his grasp of the uncommonly common. After reading his work I took pen to stationery and wrote to invite him to give a presentation to the Boston.pm since an appreciation for the wisdom in the details of life would be a welcome change of pace. The one track minded programmer would benefit greatly from seeing and pondering the details in the world beyond the keyboard. He replied in kind and expressed regret that he was going to be away for the summer term but would welcome another invitation during the Fall term.

I forgot all about this until last night when Jarkko found Suburbia by Bill Owens. The book is an utterly brilliant collection of photos from 1970s suburban California. I stared at a photo of a food pantry for nearly 20 minutes noticing how some brands of food had changed and remembering what the pantry looked like at my house. There is a picture of an elderly couple in a garage workshop that captivates since they look very happy and then you notice there are bare breasted women covering the wall behind them. Some of the pictures are accompanied by wry little comments that frame the photos perfectly. Every picture is a time capsule. If I knew or ever saw any of my fellow neighbors I'd attempt making a 2002 version of Suburbia as I'm sure that 30 years from now everything will look quaint and amusing as much as 30 years ago seems now.

permalink Ω 9 February 2002, Helsinki

My LAN or yours? *wink*wink*

Lately we've be reading how Silicon Valley has been inundated with resumes by those looking for work but jobs aren't the only thing they are seeking. Mmmm...lots of average looking white guys who describe themselves as 'intelligent and easy going' then descend into:

"Qualities I look for in a woman: She is intelligent, perceptive, creative and irreverent...Yet hers is a radiant heart, a luminous soul, a diaphanous spirit able to inspire a Scrooge to song. I would find her at an opera one evening, adorned in an elegant gown. And the next, unafraid to be caught watching a cheesy film and eating chocolate ice-cream out of the box. I would find her snooping around small towns and ever smaller museums with the unvarnished curiosity of a small child. She would find today s values distasteful, would choose wisdom over expediency, substance over fashion. Family would come before friends. Friends before work. I would find her tapping her foot at a jazz concert, crying at old movies, laughing wildly at a comedy club, kneeling down to help a child tie his shoe. She would find joy in a good conversation, mastering a new waltz step at a Victorian Ball, reading sub-titles at art-house films, learning where Orion is. Hers would be a wry sense of humor, an appreciation for the absurd and finding the comedy in everyday life. Her sense of spontaneity, which when combined with sinister glance and a sly smile, would hint of future mischief planned to make my day more interesting and different from all of the others. She would walk in beauty like the night and whisper to the sky. Hers would be a goal to lift others up before herself and views relationship as a chance to grow and help grow. And most of all, she would enjoy the company of a tall, mildly eccentric software entrepreneur who's not that bad look'n when you dress him up right and turn the lights low and...oh heck, if you're female and you're breathing"

At least Mike S., a 45 year old software engineer who vaguely reminds me of Nick Ing-Simmons, brought his lofty goals back to grim reality in a jiffy. :) The others weren't so smart and reminded me of a PM/LinuxUSERs meeting in some ways; some made me laugh and some left me with this vaguely creepy feeling of geek guys who stopped mentally maturing at age 9. I wonder if reviving the "Men of Perl" Calendar idea and even having the menofperl.org domain for swinging single perl guys could generate enough revenue to help out the foundation.....hey, photoshop can do wonders.

permalink Ω 8 February 2002, Helsinki

Toss out your Ciprofloxin

Feeling a little under the weather? Got a sniffle? Well, repent ye sinner!. I guess the Dark Ages are coming back in style just like bad disco. Where did I put my hair shirt?!

permalink Ω 8 February 2002, Helsinki

I wonder if there was a JarJarCo for Caribbean Rum

George Lucas finds Enron's lack of Lucasfilm Trademark compliance disturbing . They can weasel out of talking to the Feds but Darth has the goods on them. Justice may yet come. Where are the Jedi when you need them anyway? :)

permalink Ω 8 February 2002, Helsinki

Soylent Merging

HP is apparently looking for employee shills for the advertising campaign to get the stockholders to vote 'yes' on the proposed HP/Compaq merger. Sadly I won't be able to make it out to Cali for the screen test but I thought about what I might have said if I had to help make the "genuine and heartfelt appeal to stockowners to vote "YES" and unlock the full potential of HP and Compaq people".

HP 'Just Say YES' Campaign

"Hello, I'm Elaine and I was sold to HP about 6 months ago in an outsourcing deal with Nokia. I'm a Sr. Unix Sysadmin but, since they laid off most of the people in the building I'm more or less a lost engineer who makes an account now and then while watching the exciting backup reports go by on my console. I'm looking forward to the merger so that I can become an even smaller cog in a much larger entity where I can do less for even more money. I love my job at HP as I don't even know who my boss is but I get reminded to be sure to fill in my time in OMEGA every other day and attend pointless meetings where we talk about keeping up with our OMEGA hours. HP has billing the customer down to a fine science! It's OMEGA-riffic!

It will be a fantastic time waiting and watching to see who will get to be the lucky recipients of the 30,000 layoffs included with the merger. This is going to be so exciting, I can hardly contain myself. Even my fish look enthused. Vote "YES" for the merger as the only thing better than a big bloated bureaucratic compnay is to have 2 of them merged into one hulking monster bloated corporation! You know you want another Enron! Vote "YES" even though our printers and, well, most of our products totally suck these days but bad management and poor vision are sure to improve our product line real soon. The Soylent HP/Compaq merger is pppeeeeeooooplllee! ppppeeeeooooppplllleee!"

Well, the odds of that making it into the final commercial is pretty slim since it is genuine and heartfelt but probably not what the ad execs had in mind. It felt good just writing it anyway. Maybe the Hewletts will need some employees for the 'Hell NO' campaign and I'll be all primed :)

permalink Ω 6 February 2002, Helsinki

Celine, e, crisse moi patience!

Dubya named a couple of countries in his "Axis of Evil" state of the union address last week, all of them are remote countries that are sort of 'easy' to pick on since we've already been in wars with 2 of them. So now that we've pissed off the entire world except for those too cowed to disagree....I just found out that Celine Dion is coming out of retirement so I propose we deem this an act of terrorism and add Canada to the Axis of Evil and start bombing Canada until they take the screechy wench and her sappy repertoire back from whence it came. Canada, evil-doers of such terrorism, you have been warned.

Also, I thought the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon commercial was a hoot last night and was reminded of the Small World Research Project at Columbia University which is trying to prove that it really is more than a joke on a global scale. Sign up and join the study :)

permalink Ω 4 February 2002, Helsinki

The Dr. Spock of talk.bizarre

In the mid- to late thirties one begins to notice that the number of friends without children dwindles precipitously and once married the psyop to get you to do the same intensifies. I never played with dolls and instead had chemistry sets leaving me ill prepared to even contemplate this particular stage of life. Shopping for friends in the parental way has its own unique flavour of terror as, prior to spawning, I could buy a bottle of scotch for the father or a book for the mother as these are things I am familiar with, but shopping for baby stuff brings on terror, confusion, sweaty palms and the oppressive desire to flee on foot to the nearest bookshop. Cracking the code of the baby store requires time, patience and the ability to endure humiliation as women in the store cast furtive glances as though an alien ship had left you here for the afternoon to observe their behaviour and report back to the mothership. The women at the cash register can always see us coming and instinctively give us boxes and gift receipts before sending us away.

One of my DINK [ double income no kids ] friends sent me a link to a journal one of the talk.bizarre people who joined the parental pod people recently and describes the situation with such rabid honesty I wonder why more people don't come clean about the realities of parenthood as it's refreshing and entertaining to watch one of 'us' become one of 'them' :)

permalink Ω 3 February 2002, Helsinki

Lips moving meaning nothing

We hear a lot of people these days exclaim that certain things are 'inappropriate in the wake of 911' as a way of keeping people in line by extorting most of our collective desire to not disrespect the people who lost their lives that day. This begins to sound like a bunch of empty smarmy rhetoric when you notice that the Todd Beamer Foundation applied for a trademark on Let's Roll only 2 weeks after the attacks and hearing the families of both the WTC and Oklahoma City bombing bicker over how much money they will receive. Business as usual.

permalink Ω 1 February 2002, Helsinki