Is E. St. Louis Mayor Alvin Parks out of his Gorram Mind?

Some of the folks in question. Photo; Michael Calhoun

Somebody slipped off the democracy wagon and ended up in the cart we use to haul trash around. The Mayor is getting too authoritarian for his own good, much less for the good of the citizens of East St. Louis, and needs to be voted out fast. If I lived there, I'd be going for a no-confidence vote in the senate hell-for-leather style.

Something similar happened in New Orleans right after Katrina, with Nagen et al unconstitutionally grabbing guns from citizens and destroying property. They ended up being held in contempt by a Federal District Court and being told to set things right. Twain once wrote that history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme. Looks like Alvin Parks knows the words and is humming right along.

All I can say is that this country needs to go Libertarian post-haste before the whole cart goes sour.

Definition

I think that I have made it clear in the past that I am appreciative of J.F. Perkins' work. That's why it pains me to say that Definition was definitely not as good as it could have been, given the quality of Perkins' previous work.

Definition is a throwback to the olden days of science fiction, with identifiable people thrown into the mix with futuristic tech straight out of the author's mind. To my reckoning, that's always a good place to start. The one problem I have here is that it's hard to identify with the tech. The thing about sci-fi is that it needs to be grounded in a certain strain of reality, in order to maintain the reader's ability to identify with the setting. This is usually done through nuance, or by brief mentions here and there.. an old fashioned LCD TV on the wall, stuff like that. Having a cargo bay stuffed with two classic cars in deep space is a bit ham-fisted. I will say that the Perkins' explanations of the D-Drive was pretty well done and helped me understand what he was getting at.

No, there's three real issues with this book that sorely need addressing. First, there just doesn't seem like there was much of a vetting or editorial process with this book. There's lots of spelling and grammatical errors and, while Lord knows I make plenty myself, they are hard for the Errorists to overlook. There's also lots of plot holes, or large unexplained events happening apparently in the background. For instance, in Chapter 40(!) of the book, a large glass dome separates the crew from their escape route.. Why wasn't it mentioned before then? No one even saw a large glass partition in the ceiling, waiting to drop down? Did it just materialize? In Chapter 12, the ship apparently starts picking up pods and holding them in her field before heading to drop them off.. but that order was never given, and the ability was explained after the fact. What gives there? And as far as the overall organization goes, there's a lot of sections in the chapters where the perspective shifts from one group of characters in x place to another group of characters in y place, without at least a couple of dots between the paragraphs to warn the reader of the change. That sort of thing is.. jolting.

The second major issue is with the characters themselves. I have a feeling that over the course of the series they will be fleshed out more, but at least during the first book they are paper thin without much definition to them. The main character's entire back story can be summed up in about three sentences; one for his military past, one for his romantic past, and one for his role in winning the war against the spiders. That's it. The rest of the characters, most notably the villain and Lucas, have even less back story than that. Mr. Perkins did such a good job fleshing out the characters in Renewal that it's not beyond expectation that the characters in Definition are treated likewise.

The final issue is the ending. Sorry, but it's way to sappy. Dripping with corn syrup sappy. There's no way everything should be tied off that cleanly, and in such a short space. Maybe it could have ended with the terrorist's perspective, calculating their next move.. Or maybe in a meeting of space admin, talking about the implications of having a boy being a walking weapon. Some strife, some drama! All I ask is to make the ending not so picture perfect!

Unfortunately, Definition is about a 68 on my scale of 100. That puts it above some of the books I've read and reviewed here, but not by much. I just expected more out of Definition because of the relative strength of the author.. and these are systemic issues too. I hope Mr. Perkins will take more time in addressing these prior to his next book release.

Register to Vote!

Today I finally hit the item on my To-Do list labeled "Update Voter Registration". All things considered, it was pretty easy but not as easy as it could have been.. Nor as secure.

Going to the "Look up my registration information", all one needs to know is a person's full name, their date of birth, and the county of residence to get back a full mailing address, voter ID #, and their Polling Place. That security is pretty slack, and I think this could be updated. At the minimum, this information could be emailed to the user where it's "kind of" private (google goes through your email to tailor search results to your personality, so arguably your personal information is indeed floating around someplace in the cloud). A better version would be to create a secure server where only the user could access the information after creating an account and verifying their ID.

Then, changing your voter registration in state would be a relatively simple process of updating your account. C'mon NC, get with the times!

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Rant aside, I'm glad that I got my registration updated.. I think the deadline to update for the upcoming election cycle is early October, so it was due. Hopefully I'll have my voter registration card well before the November general election.

I'll probably spend an update sometime soon going into the pros and cons of each candidate.

Wait.. Georgia's Not in Drought Conditions?

Well, at least according to this article it isn't. Which is kind of news to me, seeing as how Flint River's nearly dry.

Clearly, the good folks of Georgia have a problem with their government being dishonest in order to support the interests of big business.. then again, name me an honest government. Except for Bhutan, but bonus points for you if you thought it.

Apple? Please.

Lifehacker is asking folks what a good replacement for Apple's native map app would be. Several thoughts come to mind.. How about just a plain old map and compass? Pretty cheap, effective, and requires no power!

Or you could try just using a dash mounted GPS unit.. doesn't draw power from your cell phone and serves that role well. Perhaps gps units are a dying breed, but I think it the manufacturers are smart they'll start building them into even standard fare cars.

Or.. just get an Android. *ba dum tish*

Emptying Pocket's; Big'un Edition

Have you ever noticed that whenever the media uses pictures of fat people, it's always candid shots or they don't show their faces? Image by Brendan McDermid.

This article is your typical shock treatment. I really don't like the interpretation done by the CDC here, which extrapolates current trends in rising obesity rates about twenty years into the future. Using a pure data trend to predict social changes over time is pretty haphazard tea-leaf reading if you ask me. Will obesity rates go up? Of course, this country's too addicted to simple sugars, soft drinks, and fast food to change in the short term. Honestly, though, I expect the social cost entailed by the rising obesity issue to cause societal course correction, just like lung cancer has done (by and large) for smoking. I think in ten years, folks will be out exercising and eating better because they don't want to go out like Uncle Billy or their parents did.

On the bright side, if the United States does start to subsidize health care costs via tax paper money (it shouldn't, but hey), we could trim the fat on the budget by trimming the fat off of people (reducing the health care costs associated with treating ailments related to obesity by lowering overall obesity numbers).
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Speaking of health care costs associated with obesity...

Jesus. If you're in the hospital for an issue, and you break the MRI machine because it wasn't built to hold that much weight, that might be your first sign that you should lose a few pounds.

Just a thought; somewhere, someone has had to grease someone up to fit inside an MRI because they were slightly too big to fit. Think about that.
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Another scare tactic article. Set phazers to white. The article doesn't go into too much detail about cultural or behavioral differences in adolescents across the races, which is where I think it goes awry. I'm putting this into the bin labeled "Needs More Research".
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NPR has a stunning "Ya Think!?" piece on the link between reduced population levels of obesity and eating more fruit and fiber. Let me know when they find out the sun is a star, and is in fact in space.
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I really like the idea of growing and buying more locally, especially given the quality and diversity of foods I've seen at the local farmer's markets. The only problem that I see is making these local agribusinesses competitive with large chain stores in terms of convenience.. Farmer's markets are kind of a one day a week thing in Winston, unless you go down the highway to the big one in Greensboro.. and that's a bit out of the way just to do one's grocery shopping.

Also, didn't it seem like that article ended a little abruptly?

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

I tried to read this book. I really tried.  I struggled through trying to read this book for a month. A month! And, even after a month, I couldn't read more than a third of the book because it was so boring. Hell, I even got through Patriots by John Rawles, and that's saying something.

Personally, I feel that I was misled. All the reviews and conversations that I had with people told me that if I had enjoyed reading Walden, or Sand County Almanac, then I'd *love* this book! Bull. This wasn't the work of a scientific mind, musing about things natural.. this was the work of a stray liberal arts major, trying to explain some weird ass form of neo-buddhism under the pretense of being a throw back to the naturalists of yore because she spends most of her time outside.

I stopped at the point where she was just going though this run-on metaphor about wanting to exist in a state of perpetual awareness of the moment. I just got sick of reading about how she lives for "facing upstream". Ugh.

On a scale of 1 to 100, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is about a 25. I can tell Annie Dillard is indeed smart, and the book itself is technically written well with very few mistakes editing wise.. but I also don't think this book was written for me. That is to say; I don't think that scientists or naturalists are this book's core audience. She spends way too much time wallowing in metaphor instead of just speaking plainly.

Disconnect from Facebook

No, no, I'm not doing the modern equivalent of a call for help by getting rid of my Facebook account, as tempting as that is sometimes. No, I'm experimenting with a Chrome extension called "Disconnect", which blocks tracking cookies from a few major sites (Facebook, Digg, Twitter etc.) in order to increase your online security.

So far I'm liking it, in the abstract sense that it *feels* better, but I'm not sure it's actually doing anything without getting to see some file at Facebook HQ which notes a sudden drop in their capability to track my movements online.

Ultimately, your best bet for forever increasing your online security is just to not be online, but which I might try as a social experiment at some point. For now, at least the Disconnect extension seems to be helping a bit.

I C(u) what you did there: Update on de-slugging cat bowls

My better half did a bang up job making a copper ring for the cat's food bowl! We've been field testing it for the past few nights, and thus far the cat's bowl has been slug free! 

You can't see it, which is probably the best part

Ah, the secret is revealed!

As you can see, the ancient secret to be revealed here is the legs added to the form to make the copper barrier harder for the slugs to initially reach. Since the copper does indeed chemically react with the slug's slime (I looked, there does not seem to be a technical term for slug slime) and basically gives the slug a little shock. So far it has worked beautifully with zero slugs observed in the bowl for the time period testing. Given that we had previously observed several slugs per night in the bowl prior to this experiment I'd call it pretty damned successful.

NC 12th Congressional District

Man, do I feel sorry for Jack Brosch. I think he's going to get a rather severe beating during the upcoming election because by voters alone he's outnumbered nearly 2 to 1, and that's using math that stretches the realm of possibility awfully thin. Mel Watt is also raising over $800 for every dollar Brosch raises. If you just want to look at cash on hand for the race, Mel Watt's got him beat by just shy of three orders of magnitude! The whole race is damn near pathetic; it's going to be like watching a kindergartner flail at a sumo-wrestler. This won't so much be an election as it will be a pro-longed victory lap.

That's a shame. For starters, the NC 12th is incredibly gerrymandered, to the point where the Democratic Party advantage is something like 300% over a straight race against a Republican candidate, and I for one possess a dripping disdain for many Congressman Watt's positions. I'd dearly love for there to be more conversation about these issues, but the Congressman would be smart to not debate him because it would give Brosch the pittance of credibility he needs to be considered a throw-away candidate. It even looks like the RNC is also leaving Brosch out in the cold too, since he's fundraising is so low, and he's got zero media presence other than what is essentially free.

To be fair, Brosch is a rather lack-luster candidate. In this district, his best bet is to run as a moderate or slightly left of center Republican, but many of his positions are taken quite literally from the GOP script on their website (a point he boldly, and rather foolishly, makes all too clear). His website is also absolutely rife with spelling and grammatical errors, which a good way of convincing educated voters to steer clear of him. I'm sure a dedicated "Errorist" could find mistakes aplenty on my own blog, but even my own untrained eye takes a vicarious beating from Blosch's assault on the English language. Congressman Watts even has the guy beaten in appearance, considering that at 67 he looks a decade younger than Brosch (I can't find any hard numbers for his age, but his Facebook profile has him graduating in 1976, putting him in his mid to early 50's).

Ultimately, what Brosch fails is the quick glance take-away. He doesn't exude confidence, leadership, charm, or intellect. Don't get me wrong, Brosch may well possess many or all of these traits (I certainly do not know the man), but his machinations for getting his positions out do not assist him in conveying these traits at all. People vote on issues, but they are also looking for leadership. If Brosch can't get around these image problems, he won't get a chance to discuss his positions on the issues at all.

I C(u) what you did there

The better half is attempting a late night hack on one of the cat's food bowl. We keep a bowl on the front porch so that we can feed the cats separately, but it tends to get slugs in it, so tonight's Mcguyverism is to wrap copper around the base to deter the slimey buggers. Not sure what it's supposed to do, but it couldn't hurt.
I'll have to do some research and figure out if copper actually repels slugs, and if so why. I can kind of see the chemicals in the slug's wake interacting negatively with the copper, but I can't make that statement decisively.

Food Security in the Asian Region

Just finished reading this article while waiting for my fiancee to come and look at the cutest picture of rodent murder I've ever seen (see my last emptying pockets entry). I'm pretty concerned about how the markets will react to the drop in supply of corn state-side due to this year's drought, so hearing that China and India are expecting long-term crises in this area in the foreseeable future is alarming, to say the least.

Let's string a few concepts together; first, global warming is affecting the rates and spatiality of precipitation world wide, which is causing some glaciers to enlarge and some glaciers to shrink. Second, many of the major rivers in Central Asia are dependent on melting from the aforementioned glaciers to maintain their average discharge. Finally, the people living in these areas are dependent on a relatively stable river discharge to support not only life, but the basic infrastructure of the economy such as water for irrigation and for industrial applications.

A long-lasting drought could not only have rather severe food implications, but could lead to territorial disputes over little used water sources, and loud arguments over any water partitioning agreements laid in the past. Disputes between Pakistan and India are common for a number of reasons, water being among them.. Is it unreasonable to expect armed turmoil over water resources when economies and lives are on the line? I don't think so, rather I think it would be prudent to expect such conflict and lay the groundwork to deal with it down the line now.

Emptying Pockets

I found this article to be genuinely disturbing. The money quote being thus: "Unstopped until they walked up to a security guard's car and surrendered". Yikes. What would have happened if Nanna decided to take over a small country, or to leverage a political issue in the US with a homemade suitcase bomb? Somebody ought to fire those folks and get some real security in place. Set the motion sensors at chest height if you're so worried about wildlife!
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I halfway expected this to be part of a Mythbusters episode. I'm glad a cost-effective method of testing construction practices is in place, but the question remains; what would happen if you added C4 to the building? Anyone? 

At any rate; I'm all for building bomb-proof buildings and this would greatly reduce the lead time in waiting for feedback on reinforcement techniques.
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It's a little unfortunate that every time Michigan gets in the news, it's always bad. That is to say that government policy in Michigan seems to support poor business practices while ignoring the property rights and health of its citizens. Shame, shame, shame. And a million gallons of crude leaking into the Kalamazoo? Don't you think that could have hit the wire sooner? Speaking of which; has anyone looked at inland applications of this? Seems oil munching bacteria would be a handy thing to have around.

At any rate; certainly looks like a land grab, unless their maintenance trucks have increased in width by about 400%.
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One day our children may say that the canary in the coal mine on global warming for most people should have been the Lemmings in Greenland. An excellent study on a drop in population due to increased warming. They haven't pegged the reason for the collapse yet, but the most plausible explanation (lack of population increase due to less time in the sack underneath fallen snow) holds up to the common sense test. The scary thing about studies like this is the domino effect that drops in population in staple foods has for higher tier predators. Pretty soon the whole thing goes pear-shaped in ecosystem collapse.

Photo; Niels Schmidt

Plus, that picture makes the stoat look like one handsome bastard, right? Hey, good for him; a good hunt is everything out in the real world.

Elitist?

There's something that I've been thinking about over the past few days, and that's the gradual transition of the term elitist from an aspiration to an insult.

I was raised to think that becoming an expert in a field, or in a skill,  or even in a hobby is a good thing. To be elite, and to caport yourself only with those who are likewise also elite.. Isn't that desirable? Isn't that what people should want? I don't want the common man building space ships,  or performing surgeries.. Why would I want a layman doing anything important?

I  don't get it, folks. There is definitionally nothing good about being common. Why celebrate it? Why denigrate those who aspire to greatness?