I just received spam with the subject line "Juicy, plump, chubby girls!"

Unfortunately, I deleted it before thinking to check whether they were offering porn or cannibalism.

Dreamt that Google had decided to become a biotech company, and I was assigned to "think of something interesting and do it." I ended up working on sunflowers with a couple of other people; it was pretty neat. Even better was the brawl later on when some woman decided to start spraying everyone in the area with ham extract - I missed most of the melee, since by the time I got there the cops were carting people off, but a good, somewhat violent time was had by all.

Yes, this is odd. On top of this, I seem to have woken up with a pagan/Christian fusion song stuck in my head - "Magna Mater Dolorosa." Not sure where that came from.

OK, I've had enough with trying to maintain a separate subject-matter filter for politics posts. Instead I'll just hide them behind a cut tag, so nobody is exposed to them without warning, and use an appropriate icon that conveys the seriousness and gravity of the matter.

Yup, this one should about do.

[politics filter]

OK, time for some general ruminations on the state of affairs w.r.t. Russia...
( Long notes on oil and intelligenceCollapse )
Conclusions: It looks like Putin has decided to play Russia's oil resources into a powerful and semi-secretive relationship with America, and possibly even Israel, that could restore a good deal of its geopolitical clout in the form a "special relationship" that gives them more or less unlimited freedom to act in their geographic sphere, now as close allies of the US. The things to watch in this regard are (a) new oil pipelines from the Caspian to Turkey and from Siberia to Murmansk, and (b) increased US-Russian intel and military cooperation. Potentially a rather handy win for all sides.

But: How much do y'all want to bet that the profits from all of this on the American side will be going disproportionately into a couple of, shall we say, well-connected companies? Sheesh.

Test #1. Partial success. The idea of maple ice cream has been vindicated strongly, as has the overall functionality of the ice-cream making machine. (Cuisinart, btw, and quite recommended based on this limited test)

The recipe in question, derived from reading through a lot of other recipes and trying to merge them, is a complete failure. For reference, the basic idea was to make a creme anglaise - boil the milk, cream and flavor mixture, whisk it in to eggs, hold it at 170F for a few moments, strain and chill - and then freeze it. The resulting flavor is hard to describe, and best not thought about too closely, especially this close to lunch.

Test #2 will use a lighter recipe, perhaps one omitting the eggs altogether. If anyone has a favored category of ice cream recipes that they think may be worth using in future tests, please let me know.

I am now the owner of an ice cream maker.

I also now have a list of experiments planned. Maple, several flowers (esp. Jasmine), fresh spearmint and peppermint (to be served together, sitting in chocolate shells), port wine, smoked salmon (to be served sitting inside half an avocado, together with very thin toasted slices of baguette), cucumber sorbet (to be served in the middle of a bowl of gazpacho), sundry fruits (maybe apple sorbet floating in some real apple cider? i.e. the good very dry Bretagne variety, not the artificially flavored shite they've been selling in the supermarkets lately...), nuts and spices (Hazelnut, nutmeg, clove & allspice, and so on) and so on...

This will be fun.

Those of you in the area may be unexpectedly dragooned into acting as guinea pigs for various of these, at various times in the near future.

Also, on a completely different note: the band 'Paris Combo' is excellent. French jazz with lots of Spanish and Gypsy influences. Highly recommended to anyone who likes any of those categories.

[politics]

And now, for your latest Nerve-Wracking News from the Near East!

<Cut to anchorman in plaid blazer with synthetic grin>

The rumor has started to circulate - (Confirmed by UPI, denied by the governments involved, no clear word yet from other journalistic sources) - that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have concluded a deal by which Pakistan will station nuclear weapons on Saudi territory, offering them an (Islamic) nuclear umbrella to replace the American defense which has been increasingly pulling out of the country since this past summer. The deal is apparently a straight oil for nukes swap. Linked story above has good overall analysis, or see Google News reports for other stories.

In sync with this, Iran has agreed to permit nuclear inspections. While definitely a step in the right direction, there are fairly widespread concerns that this is too little, too late - the program may already be at the point where it is easily concealable. Israel's chief of military intelligence advised the Knesset today that their program could reach the "point of no return" in bomb development within ten months, even given this inspections regime.

Combine this with heatups in politics [the Palestinian attack on American officials in Gaza a few days ago, various kinds of increased tension in Iraq, new pronunciamentos from bin Laden, the start of winter (and the corresponding drop in temperature to humanly sustainable levels), and even things like Malaysian PM Mahathir's and American LGEN Boykin's respective bits of brilliant statesmanship], it looks like it's going to be a hell of a winter...

I just spent an hour or so coding to the tune of Rossini's Stabat Mater Dolorosa. Excellent music, but very clearly liturgical music. Catholic liturgical music, to be precise.

That leaves one in a strange frame of mind.

A slip of the finger could transform an odometer, which measures distance travelled, to an odimeter, which measures the intensity of hatred.

A Google search on "odimeter," however, only returned a handful of people who misspelled odometer. There are apparently no plans to market such a device, perhaps from lack of consumer interest.

On a completely different, note, the Supreme Court today refused without comment to hear a key case on medical marijuana, letting stand a ruling of the 9th circuit court of appeals that doctors may discuss its use with their patients without fear of reprisal. This was unexpected, as both sides had expected the court to take the case; the decision is likely to be interpreted as agreement by the court that the right of physicians to dispense medical advice supercedes the right of the federal government to make health policy. (Which is how the DEA phrased their case) The fact that nine states have independently passed laws to this effect may have had some impact as well.

OK, back to work for me...

Reading the Unicode standard for text encoding is surprisingly fascinating. The proposal for the encoding rules for Egyptian Hieroglyphics bring up all the points they'll need to consider when encoding Mayan Hieroglyphics and various kinds of runes; the proposals for Tengwar and Cirth are just as serious.

OK, I realize this is a strange thing to be doing on a Friday night. But it's strangely alluring...

A moment ago, after having some remarkably bizarre bit of code explained to me, I walked back to my desk, saying "I am not taking nearly enough drugs to understand this."

Or at least, I would have said that, but I was interrupted halfway through "understand" by noticing that my screensaver was showing a rendered 3D cow bouncing up and down as on a trampoline, doing interesting flips.

OK, I stand corrected.

From the NY Times today:

The Palestinian prime minister-designate, Ahmed Qureia, has given Arafat and Fatah considerable say over the composition of his government. Qureia has said he wants to avoid confrontations with Arafat that helped bring down his predecessor, Mahmoud Abbas.

Well, I guess I might as well be the one to post the obituary notice -- Dr. Edward Teller, the father of the Hydrogen Bomb, prominent physicist of several disciplines, general political lunatic, and the model (I can say this now that I know he won't overhear and come after me with sharp objects for it) for Dr. Strangelove in all too many ways -- passed away yesterday at the age of 95 at his home on Stanford campus.

The world just won't be the same without him. Doctor Teller, for all that you were a madman, you were one of the most interesting madmen I've met.

I am now the proud owner of a sofa.

w00t.

From a CERT advisory I received today (CA-2003-22, "Multiple vulnerabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer"):

VU#548964 - Microsoft Windows BR549.DLL ActiveX control contains
vulnerability

The Microsoft Windows BR549.DLL ActiveX control, which provides
support for the Windows Reporting Tool, contains an unknown
vulnerability. The impact of this vulnerability is not known.

VU#xxxxxx - Software is all perfectly fine!

There has been a rumor that a certain piece of software has
a minute imperfection. Please do not listen to this at all, nudge
nudge, wink wink. There is no impact to this at all, and you should
not be in any way worried that it could allow an attacker to execute
arbitrary code on ***** systems with the privileges of the root user.
Have a nice day!

(the latest)

Every time, I think I'm going to be used to it, but it still makes me feel so damned angry, and so damned hopeless, and sad, and frustrated, every time.

Are we going to be doing this for the rest of our lives? For the rest of history?

Doesn't anyone have anything better to do than kill people?

(Mostly notes to self)

Two interesting short papers today by Wung-Hong Huang. hep-th/0308094 is a short proof that if SUSY is unbroken at the classical level, then it can't be broken at any level of perturbation theory, even if all the gauge symmetries are broken. Not an unexpected result, but it's kinda stark - just more evidence of how powerful a symmetry SUSY really is. Need to think a bit about this issue, and what it means for SUSY breaking in the universe.

hep-th/0308095 is an analysis of the statistical mechanics of systems that allow boson-fermion transmuting processes. I need to think a bit about his result - there's at least one subtle step there - but if it's correct, then this would be a nice way to think about the stat mech of a supersymmetric gas. (To do: Figure out what the value to his α parameter would be for a given gas, say shydrogen.) I'm not sure if this is good for anything, but (a) imagining what the universe would look like if it were supersymmetric is fun, and (b) this seems like it might have some unexpected uses later, if nothing else in getting a solid feel for some weird kinds of statistical systems.

For the record: C++ has about half an ass worth of support for actual object-oriented behavior.

I miss Objective-C.

Apparently the people marketing this t-shirt are actually for Schwarzenegger's candidacy.

From an article in today's NY Times:

"I don't cast my ballot based on learned behavior."

Mr. Eddings (the speaker) is part of a new breed of voter - literally. Thanks to the wonders of modern biotechnology, he has been designed since before birth to enter into a dramatic frenzy of hole-punching and button-pushing whenever shown his programmed party affiliation. These changes are revolutionizing the once-stuffy polling places of a generation ago; already voters are reporting the normal calm and poise of the booths as being replaced with a zoo-like atmosphere, punctuated by the hoots and howls of the major parties and accented by the spectacular plumage displays of the occasional Green Party member.

Party leaders are hopeful that these new technologies will help ensure high voter turnout in an age of increasing apathy. Reports of more extensive engineering -- Democrats programmed to form protest marches and Republicans programmed to eat Democrats -- have so far been fervently denied by both sides.

Other parties may soon enter the fray, as well. When asked about a rumored "Project Oompa-Loompa," Ross Perot of the Reform Party answered "You can't make hay and cut bait at the same time!" Analysts are still trying to determine whether this amounts to confirmation or denial.

Code runs. Code reads in data. Code runs elaborate curve fits, parametric models, calculates useful parameters. Code then writes the input parameters to the output file, instead of the output data.

Of course, I only notice this after the code runs.

Sigh.

This is an amusing toy. It assembles a random filename of the sort typically output by digital cameras, then does a Google image search for that. It's called the "personal image finder."

Not a Google product, btw, just something someone came up with which is getting passed around here.

(Hopefully coming soon: The amusing toy thought up by one of my officemates. I've informed him that he needs to get this up onto the Labs page, because it's far, far too entertaining. Details to follow later, hopefully.)

Well, as of now it's 0400, the code may be approaching functionality, and I've managed to be the last person here tonight. Hey, I wonder how long until the early-morning-type people show up...

To do: Go home and sleep. For a long time.

Coming in to work at 0100 to check on a compute job. Good thing I did; it was, in fact, not working, and right now I'm fixing it so it can run while I sleep.

But interesting to note that the place is still pretty much bustling at this hour, too. I'm not sure if people here ever sleep.

Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I don't, all that often, so maybe they don't either.

From this week's NY Times food column in the magazine:

"I've never subscribed to the marketers' description of monkfish as the "poor man's lobster"... If you see a whole monkfish at the market, you'll find its massive mouth scarier than a shark's. Apparently it sits on the bottom of the ocean, opens its Godzilla jaws and waits for poor unsuspecting fishies to swim right into it, not unlike the latest recepients of W's capital-gains cuts. So it has in common with lobster only reprehensibility of character."

[I]t was reported this week that a company called Real Men Outdoor Productions Inc. has begun offering "Bambi Hunts," in which Las Vegas-area men pay $10,000/hour to shoot naked women with paintballs. I suppose this should provoke some sort of feminist rage in me, but in all honesty, this is too weird to be sexist. It's just apocalyptic.