found_drama

• Gulf oil spill: Be prepared for the worst
  at Boing Boing — a quote within a quote, re: Exxon Valdez:
  

  Despite heroic efforts involving more than 11,000 people, 2 billion dollars, and aggressive application of the most advanced technology available, only about 8 percent of the oil was ever recovered.

  In other words, off-shore drilling (and petrol, in a more general sense) is a fundamentally bankrupt institution and we better start in earnest on our alternatives right fucking now.

  (tagged: oil petrol )
• Tax the Hell Out of Wall Street and Give it to Main Street
  at blog maverick (via DF):
  

  If you dont think the company you are buying is worth at least a quarter more than what you are paying , why are you buying shares ?

  (tagged: essay government money politics taxes )
• Quantum of Deployment
  at Etsy's Code as Craft blog — an awesome (and thorough) run-down of their push-button deployment process. Good readin'.
  (tagged: architecture build dev webdev essay work )
• Responsive Web Design
  A List Apart:
  

  In recent years, I’ve been meeting with more companies that request “an iPhone website” as part of their project. It’s an interesting phrase: At face value, of course, it speaks to mobile WebKit’s quality as a browser, as well as a powerful business case for thinking beyond the desktop. But as designers, I think we often take comfort in such explicit requirements, as they allow us to compartmentalize the problems before us. We can quarantine the mobile experience on separate subdomains, spaces distinct and separate from “the non-iPhone website.” But what’s next? An iPad website? An N90 website? Can we really continue to commit to supporting each new user agent with its own bespoke experience? At some point, this starts to feel like a zero sum game. But how can we—and our designs—adapt?

  (tagged: css CSS3 design mobile ui usability ux webdev essay todo )
• doombot » Blogging the Trilogy: The Empire Strikes Back
  via DF:
  

  If it were only that the prequels were ruined by subpar writing, I would be okay. Disappointed, but hardly inconsolable. Maybe Lucas had just caught lightning in a bottle with the originals. But unfortunately, the nature of the prequels seems to spoil the originals merely by occupying shelf space near them, via some sort of heinous osmosis. Now, if you watch the prequels before the original trilogy (in chronological order), the ending of Empire is completely without weight. The biggest reveal in the history of cinema is ruined. Sure, there’s the dramatic irony of watching Episode IV and V knowing Luke and Leia are siblings and Vader is their father, but it’s not played for dramatic irony; for that you need suspense, and the climax of Empire is dependent on surprise, not suspense. It is the reason I will ensure that my children not watch the prequels until they’ve seen the original trilogy (in whatever form it exists by that point).

  (tagged: starwars )
• Native UI or Consistent UI across devices?
  at merhl (via JL) — The implicit question here: at what point does distinctive look-and-feel become a barrier to user comprehension and/or adoption?
  (tagged: ui ux usability design todo blog )

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Excellent. Almost perfect. To all of those that say that this is Heinlein’s best work: I agree, and would go so far as to say “by far”.

A few thoughts (in no particular order^[1]):

(1) Chapter twenty-six is probably one of the best single chapters in science fiction literature. Maybe all literature.

(2) Heinlein prevents this from being a five-star work with (surprise!) how he portrays women. Hamstrung, they are, when they ought to be in power. He drops hints that the Lunar society has the most empowered women in history, and yet the families are not matriarchal; and though the Revolution seems to start with Wyoh, she quickly fades into the background (politically); and then every other little detail (one of the kickers for me being during the climactic War Cabinet meeting when our narrator refers to one of the women as “a good little fem that knows when to stay quiet”^[2]). Sigh.

(3) Mike. Poor Mike. So tragic.

(4) “Throw rocks at them.” So great.

(5) Why it gets held up as “a masterpiece of libertarian revolution” however escapes me. Are the “Loonies” libertarians? I suppose so, but if they are it is by accident, by happenstance, and not by design. Manuel’s narrative (both of his own opinions and as he represents Prof) would have us believe that since there is no tradition in the penal colony-cum-nation state of a taxation-for-services model, that it is foreign to them and thus by definition poisonous. But this is a convenient party-line refutation of Lunar Authority claims to ownership/control of the satellite. “We don’t owe you anything because you’ve never actually given us anything.” It’s a Boston Tea Party in extremis^[3], and perhaps even a bit self-undermining as it’s revealed that (a) Prof later on flat-out admits that they’re stealing^[4], and (b) the penultimate government that the Loonies settle on winds up sounding pretty traditional anyway^[5]. What does this mean for the tonal qualities of the novel…? It means that it doesn’t really wind up looking like much of a celebration of libertarianism.

Regardless: thoroughly enjoyed.

★★★★☆ on the Goodreads.com scale.

1. And with “fair warning” of spoiler alerts. [↩]
2. Or something like that. [↩]
3. And perhaps, now that I think of it, “seasonally appropriate” with the current political climate? [↩]
4. Which is to say—as I understand libertarian philosophies, out-right theft is a “crime” even in that political framework. [↩]
5. In other words: I believe that they levy some taxes at the end there. [↩]

How I spent my weekend; a little extreme close-up “before and after” shot for folks:

According to my neighbors, that’s 20 years worth of dirt and grime and organic funk that got blasted off with a little water and a whole lot of pressure^[1]. If you like that, there’s more here, here, and here.

A few miscellaneous thoughts during the process:

• The nice part about blasting off 20 years worth of dirt is that it’s really obvious when you miss a spot.
• The bad part about blasting off 20 years worth of dirt is that when you’re done, it’s really obvious when you missed a spot.
• 20 years worth of dirt accumulation is really gross. And green when you get down close and look at it.
• With the water flying everywhere, I think I went through every pair of socks that I own.
• The original plan was to sand and paint… but holy crap what a difference the washing made all by itself.
• It is amazing what a little water and a lot of pressure will do.
• Pressure washers are bad ass.

Original photo posted on Flickr.

1. We did the TSP wash later. [↩]

• First Novel Survey Results
  by Jim C. Hines (via B²) — filed under "makes me feel less bad"
  (tagged: blog publishing writing )
• Men’s Room Mathematics
  at Moral Hazard:
  

  I’m excited to have stumbled upon an apparently new mathematical system; the sequence generated by the Urinal Mapping Function is not found in the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences.

  (tagged: humor blog urinal math )
• CSS and image optimization
  Stoyan Stefanov's presentation from the Web Optimization Summit
  (tagged: css webdev optimization pagespeed todo )
• Webkit CSS Properties
  (tagged: WebKit webdev css CSS3 )
• mnutt/hummingbird
  Real time stats? Can we get something more interesting that page views? (Either way, looks pretty cool. Too bad it's just in WebKit browsers for now…)
  (tagged: ajax javascript Node.js visualization stats )

Before we begin in earnest, a quote:

If much in the world were mystery the limits of that world were not, for it was without measure or bound and there were contained within it creatures more horrible yet and men of other colors and beings which no man has looked upon and yet not alien none of it more than were their own hearts alien in them, whatever wilderness contained there and whatever beasts.

Of Cormac McCarthy’s corpus, a friend once said: “In those novels, the best thing that can happen is that the worst thing doesn’t happen.”

Of Blood Meridian in particular, I’d be willing to say: “The best thing that can happen is that the worst thing eventually halts.”

This novel is a surreal peregrination into the muddy moralities of war—a novel so sociopathic and alienating and fraught with existential anxiety that solipsism becomes akin to salvation.

It’s a disturbing and troubling and bleak read, but worthy of being read, and perhaps even necessary.

• "Political Animal" 5/4/2010 Quote of the Day
  at The Washington Monthly:
  

  Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) doesn't want Faisal Shahzad, the suspect in the failed car bombing in Times Square, to be Mirandized. Neither does Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.).
  

  "Did they Mirandize him? I know he's an American citizen but still," King said.

  "But still"? What does that mean, exactly?

  (tagged: politics Miranda )
• When can I use…
  (tagged: webdev )
• Gowalla Tools
  "Providing utilities to Gowalla fans everywhere"
  (tagged: GoWalla todo )
• narwhal
  (tagged: narwhal javascript CommonJS dev todo )
• CSS3 Solutions for Internet Explorer
  at Smashing Magazine
  (tagged: CSS CSS3 webdev hack IE )

A good one this month:

Java 1.6
“ear bitten” psychiatric
persistence hunting

“Search Term Haiku” is a series wherein I examine this site’s log files and construct one or more haiku poems from search terms and phrases that led visitors to the site. Where possible, I attempt to keep the search phrases intact. However, as these are haiku poems, I do need to follow the rules.