News and Notes: 10-23-05

I'm still getting back up to speed after my recent trip to New Orleans. Here's a look at what I've seen so far....

World Series Teams, Cities Mirror Images

Over at This Blog is Full of Crap, fellow Houstonian Laurence Simon has an ongoing list of who's rooting for whom. As I write this, Chicago leads the series after winning last night's game 5-3. I saw the action up until the score was 4-3. The series looks to be evenly-matched and the teams are indeed the mirror images of each other the sportswriters said they'd be. The series could well go on for all seven games.

And speaking of mirror images, awhile back, I wrote of a visit to Chicago to see my in-laws, who'd recently relocated there from New Orleans:

The wife and I had a great time visiting her folks in Chicago, where they recently relocated. We'd been there once before, too, and it's the only northern city we could see ourselves living in for any length of time. I think the in-laws are especially enjoying the embarrassment of cultural riches possessed by the Hog Butcher for the World.

Note the following: (1) the ability of this Southerner to imagine living in Chicago, (2) Chicago's cultural riches, and (3) Chicago's economic might. Now compare this to today's Rick Casey column in the Houston Chronicle.

Chicago fans may not be aware of it, but when they come to Houston this week they will be visiting their younger brother.

Houston is, in so many ways, a strapping adolescent version of Chicago.

...

Houston lagged in development for fairly obvious reasons. With the Great Lakes and railroads, Chicago had earlier and stronger links to the population centers of the East Coast, boosting its economy.

Houston wouldn't become an industrial giant until the creation of the Ship Channel and the advent of air conditioning.

Chicago and the North had the technology to tame the brutal winters, but Houston and the South couldn't truly thrive until we had a means to conquer the beastly summers.

Now that we have, Houston is following in the footsteps of its bigger brother.

Casey goes on to point out the numerous similarities between the two cities. I'm not normally a big Casey fan, but for the most part, he nails it today. No wonder I liked Chicago so much when I visited!

Congratulations ...

... go to the General, whose Benjo Blog recently saw its 10,000th visitor.

Posts on Blogging

I haven't posted much on the medium of blogging lately, but others I read regularly have.

The Gaijin Biker at Riding Sun comments on a recent top ten list of blogging mistakes he came across. Here's the list, but be sure to stop by and see what the Gaijin Biker had to say. I agree with most of it. My own additional comments follow in brackets.

1 No Author Biographies [See also #9.]

2 No Author Photo [See also #9.]

3 Nondescript Posting Titles

4 Links Don't Say Where They Go

5 Classic Hits are Buried [I call having a list of favorite posts "link insurance". Quite a long time ago, I made a really stupid mistake while composing a post that a couple of commenters roasted me for overnight. At the time, I had no list of favorite posts. My readership dropped by about a third and took quite a while to recover. I had been thinking about adding a list of favorite posts already, and after that, wondered whether such a list might have given new readers a chance to see that I wasn't the complete idiot I felt like after making that mistake.

This can do more than possibly save you from being misrepresented by a bad post. It can also give a passer-by incentive to explore a bit and then return. This is especially good to have around in the event you get noticed by a high-traffic blogger.]

6 The Calendar is the Only Navigation

7 Irregular Publishing Frequency

8 Mixing Topics [I do not regard this as a mistake. I elaborate on this further here.]

9 Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss [For academics, this could be your biggest nightmare -- except for the fact that this problem might solve itself (not necessarily a good thing). For those who, like myself, blog anonymously, #1 and #2 above are hardly mistakes, but you probably want to avoid making this particular mistake anyway.]

10 Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service

To the list, I would add a few of things that have hampered my enjoyment of other's blogs.

Not making it obvious where permanent links to individual posts are

Using scripts that cause the page to load too slowly

Making it impossible for readers to post comments unless registered with the site

On the last, I note that Riding Sun has a way to register, and yet I can still post comments there as a "guest".

Shifting gears, both Martin Lindeskog and the General mentioned some tools that look interesting to me. Lindeskog points to an interesting search engine whose name I really like: Inquisitor. Some results pop up even as you type! Note that Inquistor is in beta.

The General mentions Flock, a Mozilla-based browser that includes a blogging window. I might give this one a spin once Time-Warner gets my cable fixed so I'm back up to speed at home with Roadrunner.

Curtis Weeks, an avid template tweaker, wants reader input on the general design of his site. I think he's contemplating "changing interior frames from lavender to butter" (or was that "cobalt instead of lavender") and needs a little bit of encouragement before he takes the plunge.

No! Just kidding! Read what he says first!

And finally, Martin Lindeskog points to an ambitious project at Politburo Diktat to make a family tree of the blogosphere. As for me, I ain't got no blog-daddy and, as far as I can tell, no "blog children", either.

If I've got any young 'uns I don't know about running around, let me know.

News on Objectivism

The Undercurrent is hosting its fourth blogger contest.

The Fountainhead has recently been published in Chinese.

Zach Oakes is in the process of reactivating the PSU Objectivist Club. No word yet on whether Joe Pa has signed on as faculty sponsor. Best of luck, Oakes!

The General, busy with law school, is not the only one with a loaded hopper. Sarah Beth is immersed in business courses and OAC work besides.

Over at the Charlotte Capitalist, Andy Clarkson mentions that Prodos recently interviewed Allen Gotthelf about his book On Ayn Rand, and lists the topics.

From the Mail Bag

After a recent post in which I expressed my dislike of certain aspects of pop culture, a reader emailed me the following under the subject line, "Oy!": "They say that in popular culture, there is no bottom. But there is."

Appropriately, the news comes from Down Under.

Amazingly, I have heard of this bizarre practice! My wife saw something about it on television the other day and thought I'd get a laugh out of it, and so she told me.

Without further ado, I will quote (chortle), without comment (snort), from the article (guffaw).

"The good news on sphincter bleaching is that it's safer than anything involving general anaesthetics or fat-vacuuming gizmos."

Yes. Sphincter bleaching. And no, we're not talking about Scott Peterson's blond hair.

With "technological advances" like these, who needs Beavis and Butthead? Perhaps we should revisit that discussion about Leonard Peikoff and the Greeks....

Interesting Books

Reader Adrian Hester, who recalled my high praise of Bernard Lewis's What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, has informed me that Lewis has penned another interesting book.

I got a copy of Bernard Lewis's From Babel to Dragomans [link added]. It's a collection of entertaining essays about Middle Eastern history and about history as a field.

Many of the essays are a result of his "closing his files"--over several decades he would put interesting little facts in his files, and now that he's pretty much retired he's getting rid of the files in the best way, by writing them up as short, interesting essays. For instance, there's an entertaining 10-page essay, "Middle Eastern Feasts," on the history of food, drink, and cutlery in Middle Eastern society. Other essays are very large-scale interpretive essays, such as a very fine one on the history of the Islamic financial and taxation systems up to the rise of what is misleadingly called "feudalism" around 1000 AD; it's a clear, excellent 7 pages. Oddly enough, it was published in 2004 and yet seems already to have been remaindered, so there should be cheap sale copies at Border's or whatnot, so keep your eyes open for it.

I think I will.

Microsoft Palladium Redux

The Resident Egoist points out an alarming possibility about that laser printer you just purchased. Here, he quotes the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

A research team led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently broke the code behind tiny tracking dots that some color laser printers secretly hide in every document.

The U.S. Secret Service admitted that the tracking information is part of a deal struck with selected color laser printer manufacturers, ostensibly to identify counterfeiters. However, the nature of the private information encoded in each document was not previously known.

"We've found that the dots from at least one line of printers encode the date and time your document was printed, as well as the serial number of the printer," said EFF Staff Technologist Seth David Schoen.

He then adds:

It is also important to know that this information may not be available only the U.S Secret Service, but possibly to every government on Earth. Hell, if companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Cisco -- among others -- have not refrained from making explicit deals with dictatorial government such as China to block the use of such words as "democracy", "liberty", "freedom", and "human rights", what is there really to prevent others from making similar deals as the present one between the U.S government and the printing industry? Not to forget, of course, that nearly everything we consume is "Made In China".

Read the whole thing.

The Good Book Just Got Better

Philip B. Pape found a web resource that many Objectivists will find useful: The Skeptic's Annotated Bible.

Chickens Come Home to Roost

The wife and I finally saw Serenity yesterday! I give it a solid A and strongly recommend it.

This story, of chickens coming home to roost, reminds me, in different ways, of two elements of the story, one at the beginning, and the other at the end.

Head of the Qalqilya teachers' union, Naim Al Ashqar told PNN that the union is working to set up a group meeting that includes official and popular institutions to look into the necessary steps in light of the recent attack on a teacher. Apparently, the 10th grader struck the teacher on the back of his head with a sharp object, seriously wounding him.

The Qalqilya teachers' union issued a statement condemning such attacks on teachers by students, calling these students, "immoral" and accusing them of undermining the entire educational process. In its statement, the union said the lack of involvement from student's parents and school rules that limit the teacher's disciplinary powers are two major reasons for the spread of this phenomenon.

I'll be cryptic and leave it to the reader to figure out what I'm talking about.

That's all, folks!

-- CAV