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November 28, 2006
That only leaves 93%
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Well, that was the most malformed quiz I've ever posted. Its been locked away in a HTML table to prevent it breaking the entire page.
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 10:25 AM
November 22, 2006
Inherent contradiction
Is it just me, or is there a selective lack of critical thinking amongst journalists now days?
From the BBC story titled "Israel to probe cluster bomb use"
The pressure groups Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both criticised Israel for firing cluster bombs into southern Lebanon during the 34-day conflict.In its latest report, Amnesty asserts that civilians on both sides bore the brunt of the fighting.
As well as highlighting the issue of cluster bombs, Amnesty found that Hezbollah hid Katyusha rockets among civilians and often fired them into Israel from the cover of civilian villages.
But researchers found no evidence that Hezbollah actually used civilians as human shields during the fighting.
The final senteces both abut and butt.
Using civialians as cover is not using civilians as human shields? I applaud the BBC's total mastery of cognitave dissonance.
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 09:44 AM
November 06, 2006
Lies, damned lies and statistics.
Recently, I've been checking out parts for a hypothetical new PC. The variable parts at the moment are CPU, graphics card, power supply and motherboard.
Which means I've settled on a case.
Checking out potential sound cards and I came across something that gave me pause. I like Creative Labs products. I've been buying them since the first Sound Blaster came out a very, very long time ago. But this is utterly ridiculous.
They have an X-Fi device that promises:
Imagine being in the studio as your favorite artist records a new album. The sound is real and live the way it was meant to be heard. When the album gets mass-produced on CD, it is being converted to 16-bit CD quality. And the sound quality of that original performance suffers. When you compress the songs into MP3, you'll notice an even greater loss of sound quality. Your favorite album now sounds flat and lifeless.
Flat and lifeless? Ok. MP3s are not as good as CDs are not as good as live. Gotcha.
But... You're analyzing and breaking out signals "intelligently", converting a stereo sound to a synthetic surround. Thats fine. Its actually quite interesting. But you're never going to get back to a pristine signal.
Which is why I had to laugh at their graph.
Letting alone the fact that, somehow, they have quantified the listening 'experience' (how?), playing a CD through X-Fi will be a better experience than sitting in a Studio?
Even more wizardry - playing an MP3 will give the same level of experience as the CD.
I'm sorry. CD is digital. By definition, the clipping levels and sampling rates are dropping information.
MP3s toss even more information when compressing. Very cunningly, so you don't really notice a degradation, but still tossing bits in the quest for 10:1 compression.
And you can restore them to better-than-live fidelity by intelligently guessing the bits that were dropped? Right. So you're saying I'd get a better MP3 by playing the CD on the stereo via an X-Fi and sampling the output?
I'll trust that its a clever signal enhancer. But better than live? Not buying it.
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 09:58 PM
November 03, 2006
Times bombshell story
The New York Times carries as their front page article today "U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer".
Which by and large, and quite rightly attacks the Bush administration for publishing these particular Iraqi documents on the internet.
The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.Emphasis added
Well, you know, anywhere else except the UK's Ministry of Defence, which released a step by step guide in 2002 and helpfully added in how to smuggle it into the country.
Regardless, definitely something you don't want on the internet and a fair criticism. Heads should roll for it. No argument there.
However, the closing paragraphs didn't fit so well.
The Web site, “Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal,” was a constantly expanding portrait of prewar Iraq. Its many thousands of documents included everything from a collection of religious and nationalistic poetry to instructions for the repair of parachutes to handwritten notes from Mr. Hussein’s intelligence service. It became a popular quarry for a legion of bloggers, translators and amateur historians.
Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.Emphasis added
Whether they were a year away in the 1990s and the shell games with the UN inspectors slowed them up, or they were a year away in 2002 is not made clear, nor is it of particular relevance.
I think I can reconcile all of this:
There were no weapons of mass destruction being developed in Iraq. There was no reason to go to war. If we hadn't, Iraq now would have been a counterbalance to Iran, but without the nuclear deterrent they weren't not developing. But there was a war, Saddam was deposed and the Bush administration subsequently published all the papers it found there that hadn't been torched.
Some of these papers contain information that should never have been released.
Someone might do something bad like build a nuclear bomb with them.
Obviously not Iraq, because they weren't developing any WMD, just like they kept telling the UN instpectors. But someone, someone we wouldn't trust in the same way we would Saddam, just might.
The world was a far safer place when Iraq (and not the inept US government) had these documents securely contained in its research facilities.
Why is the room spinning?
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 10:47 AM
November 01, 2006
Lawyer arrested...
In the annals of moonbattery, this one is rather special.
Thomas J. Connolly, of Scarborough, a prominent defense attorney and 1998 Democratic candidate for governor was charged with criminal threatening this morning after an incident beside Interstate 295.
He's also the guy who released information in 2000 about
President George W. Bush's drunken driving conviction 48 hours before the vote, but that has little relevance.
South Portland police were notified around 9 a.m. that a man wearing a rubber Osama bin Laden mask was standing on top of a berm along the highway carrying a sign that said “I Love Tabor,”
"There was a First Amendment this morning when I woke up. I don't know how it evaporated with the dawn," he said.
Well, that's not so bad, the man has a right to protest and free speech is protected - though the relevance of Bin Laden to the Taxpayer's Bill of rights is questionable.
... and waving what appeared to be an assault rifle.Four South Portland officers and two state troopers converged on the man. They drew their guns when he did not respond to their demand that he drop his weapon.
Police said instead he walked toward them dropping plastic hand grenades.
Wave an assault rifle on an interstate and chances are good people will call the police, because they might just assume its real. The nice police men will ask you to drop the weapon, because they will also assume the gun is real and that you are insane.
Mr Connolly should probably read the local statutes and then check amendments XI and X again. The State even has a handy webpage, with this gem:
Title 17-A: MAINE CRIMINAL CODE
Part 2: SUBSTANTIVE OFFENSES
Chapter 9: OFFENSES AGAINST THE PERSON
§209. Criminal threatening
1. A person is guilty of criminal threatening if he intentionally or knowingly places another person in fear of imminent bodily injury. [1975, c. 499, § 1 (new).]
2. Criminal threatening is a Class D crime. [1975, c. 499, § 1 (new).]"I didn't expect to be arrested," he said.
What did you expect? Suicide by cop?
"Obviously I touched a post-9/11 nerve."
Right. That's it. It was the rubber mask. That was the mistake. Obviously if you'd dressed up as a clown and waved an AK-47, that would have been fine.
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 09:54 AM