Listening to: The Fuse - Bruce Springsteen

The DVDs for the weekend were Shattered
Glass and Stoked: The Rise and
Fall of Gator. Both are stories of young guys who fall from grace. The first is
about Stephen Glass a writer for The New Republic who
is now a lawyer and the second is about Mark “Gator” Rogowski an 80’s skateboarding
superstar who is now a customer of the Federal Prison system. Admittedly the falls
are not comparably drastic but both stories provide an interesting insight into the
impact of fame and fortune on young people. Glass is a young writer who fabricates
a good number of his TNR stories and Gator murders a woman. Kind of tragic and
very interesting.

On a personal level the most interesting aspects were the interviews with Gators peers…
guys like Tony Hawk - you know, people who are now larger than Gator ever was. Their
main points were that even though the 90’s were a tough time for skating it was worth
sticking around because it paid off in the end. While not of the same magnitude it
has been interesting going through a similar boom/bust cycle in the software industry.
People who were in the software industry for a quick buck left in 2001… those who
stuck ’round are now seeing the benefits.

Listening to: The Mish - Che Fu

Bed time reading last night was The
Real Lesson of Enron’s Implosion: Market Makers Are In the Trust Business by R.
Preston McAfee (yeah… I know… go figure). McAfee describes the dynamics of trust
for a business… not just for Banks and Insurance companies but businesses in general.
This point I thought was very important:

An important element of the trust business is that a loss of trust cannot be contained;
it will spill over into all aspects of a company’s operations. Enron’s
hidden debts destroyed all of its businesses, including the ones that were profitable.
When customers believe a company behaved poorly about one product, customers’
beliefs will tend to transfer to that company’s other products.

It’s one of the first times I have seen trust described in a sensible manner
for a business. Well worth a read… maybe not before bed, but over lunch or on the
bus.

Listening to: Chameleon - Concord Dawn

In “Why
I Like Blogs” I mentioned that internal monologue is moderated on a blog.
In retrospect I feel that I have undersold the real “internet into/of the brain”
benefit of blogs. The moderation and energy required to post thoughts is not such
that it can’t be done at a whim. The moderation is only a personal thing (i need to
moderate my thoughts so that friends of friends don’t immediately think that i am
a nutter)… the technology allows the content to be published in a comparatively
spontaneous manner… it is that spontaneity that enables the requisite insight and
honesty to povide the illusion of being able to see inside the authors head.

Listening to: Little Things - Trinity Roots

I opened up the roll I received last week:

It contains a couple of meters of uni-directional fibre:

And a couple of meters of bi-directional fibre:

So my first test lay-up was done yesterday and I will check the results on Friday…assuming
the ambient temp is enough to cure the resin properly

Listening to: Tour of Outer Space - Rhombus

From Arstechnica. The Sony PSP won’t
have region coding on games. Cool. 1+ PSP.

Listening to: Geek USA - Smashing Pumpkins

Nintendo (very work safe) sent
Suicide Girls (very not work safe) a nasty-o-gram because some fan of Nintendo’s
games had posted “the Nintendo trademark(s)/works” in their profile. While
it all ended up nicely (Nintendo saw that they might’ve been a little zealous) Penny
Arcade has posted
an amusing take on the matter.

Listening to: I Am Sound - The Dandy Warhols

Found on SuicideGirls (very
not work safe). Amnesty International has released
its report on the US torture policies. From the 200-odd
page report:

“It is a recurring theme in history”, said a senior United Kingdom (UK) judge
in a criticism of US “war on terror” detentions, “that in times of war, armed conflict,
or perceived national danger, even liberal democracies adopt measures infringing human
rights in ways that are wholly disproportionate to the crisis”.(7) Certainly, a glimpse
at the history of torture in the 20th century was enough to ring alarm bells following
the crime against humanity that was committed in the USA on 11 September 2001. The
situation contained some classic ingredients that would demand principled leadership
if human rights were not to suffer in the wake of such an atrocity. In the mix was
an elusive, ill-defined and demonized enemy; shortcomings in intelligence-gathering;
an official interpretation of the situation as new, unique and requiring special measures;
and an apocalyptic picture painted by government of a stark moral choice between “good
and evil” faced by society and wider “civilization”. 

Listening to: Boy Strange - Petshop Boys

From Bill
Gibson:

This isn’t the election in which to make the quixotic but satisfying point that
you’d really rather vote Green, or the quixotic but satisfying point that you’d really
rather not have to vote for any more white men in tight blue suits at all.

This is an election in which to vote for *the greater likelihood of there being more
elections in the future*.

I went on the turps with some of the lads from work last Friday (hence a Saturday
of DVDs and BBC retrospectives). Chris and I got into a very heated argument about
voting and not voting. While I understand the reasons for not voting there are times
when you need to cast your vote with the lesser of two evils.

The western democratic system doesn’t count:

1. Candidate A

2. Candidate B

3. People who are pissed off with society’s view and it’s leaders

4. People who have ripped up their votes

5. People who just didn’t vote

And if options 3 thru 5 out weigh options 1 and 2 we do it over again. It only counts
options 1 and 2 (well options 1 to (N-3)… but you get the picture)… all the rest
of are statistical road kill. Furthermore the system doesn’t have a lower threshold…
in most cases the decision is not made by the population, it is made by THE VOTERS
and we don’t throw it open for reconsideration if only a certain percentage of the
population vote. There is only one thing crank handles like Bush like more than being
handed the title… and that’s for the thinkers not to vote.

Listening to: Succubus - Concord Dawn

From Boing
Boing. The Economist reluctantly
backs Kerry:

John Kerry says the war was a mistake, which is unfortunate if he is to be commander-in-chief
of the soldiers charged with fighting it. But his plan for the next phase in Iraq
is identical to Mr Bush’s, which speaks well of his judgment. He has been forthright
about the need to win in Iraq, rather than simply to get out, and will stand a chance
of making a fresh start in the Israel-Palestine conflict and (though with even greater
difficulty) with Iran. After three necessarily tumultuous and transformative years,
this is a time for consolidation, for discipline and for repairing America’s moral
and practical authority. Furthermore, as Mr Bush has often said, there is a need in
life for accountability. He has refused to impose it himself, and so voters should,
in our view, impose it on him, given a viable alternative. John Kerry, for all the
doubts about him, would be in a better position to carry on with America’s great tasks.

Last time ’round they backed Bush.

Listening to: Vertigo - U2

Stick it to the bastard! Not that I think it’s going to make a whole lot of difference
or will even succeed:

Four former Guantanamo detainees yesterday sued Secretary of Defense Donald H.
Rumsfeld and 10 others in the military chain of command overseeing the American interrogation
prison in Cuba, alleging that the officials are personally responsible for illegal
acts of prolonged arbitrary detention and torture.

A question went ’round work today. Should nations and individuals be held to the same
standards? I don’t believe so, they make different decisions in different contexts.
It’s like expecting a pocket calculator to calculate PI to the same accuracy as 4000
node Linux cluster. But they MUST be held to the same ethics. Read the full
article.