Ankh-Morpork in the Jungle

There are some amazing parallels between Terry Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork and Papua New Guinea. Jim Austin's tales of being an active member of the Royal Papua New Guinea Police Force in the 1980s attests to that.

We have the old, pre-'Guards Guards' Night Watch in action:

To call their procedures non-confrontational was an understatement. Both cops stood on the road and began hurling gravel on the roof.

The roofs were all corrugated iron in our neighborhood so the racket was deafening. The idea was to alert the criminals to the presence of the police and then leave them a convenient escape route. In this case they could run out the back door, scamper over the fence and be gone. It worked. After ten minutes of rock throwing the police entered the house in a tentative manner and sure enough, no criminals. Now was my chance to join this cadre of crime fighting professionals.

And a touch of the old Night Watch, when it was run by street monsters:

When I finally climbed up the bank I saw Andy with his shotgun about halfway up the nose of the evil driver's passenger. The driver himself was in a fetal position on the road where four of PNG's finest were vigorously putting the boots to him.

It was sort of like a Rodney King deal without the caring gentility of the LAPD. Eventually the cops tired of stomping our suspect and tossed him and his pal into a waiting paddy wagon. On the way home I advised Andy to have an ambulance waiting for us at the station as I was sure our man was severely injured if not dead.

PNG highlanders still retained a strong element of traditional dwarfish clang:

[I] returned to see Andy in heated discussion with the head man. He was demanding that all of the men leave their spears behind before they entered the town.

The head man argued that the spears were merely ceremonial and were necessary to complete their tribal dress.

Traditional Ankh-Morpork activities are a big part of life in the PNG highlands:

The road was blocked with oil drums, logs and boulders. On the other side of this barrier were about 1000 screaming people and two flatbed trucks whose beds were crammed with so many people that the tire were virtually flat and going nowhere. We all stepped out and Appelis, our regular force member parlayed with some of the more prominent members of the mob.

The problem was that everyone wanted to board a PMV to get to town to see the dead politician and take part in the traditional rioting and sacking of the town. By the time the PMV's got to their part of the highway they were already full and just sped by the growing crowd.

And my favourite line in the story?

Most PNG mechanics know that six lug nuts on a rim is a waste of four

If you like that story, there are more by the author here.

Holy hand grenade!

From the Department of You Can't Be Too Careful, a British pub was evacuated after workmen came across a prop from the 1975 movie "Monty Python And The Holy Grail". Bomb disposal experts were called in to inspect the "Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch", and declared it safe after nearly an hour.

Left: the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch; Right: the Holy Hand Grenade Whoopee Cushion.

Big Brother is Watching

How very apt...

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At least the Spanish tell you when you're being filmed.

Deathless prose

This piece of deathless prose is worthy of winning a Bulwer-Lytton Award:

"Had it persevered - if awful chance had decreed that it escape from the quicksand as nightfall closed in over that foetid marsh, neither Colonel Jameson or Jim Tressidy or anybody in Horton's Crossing or camped in the adjacent hills would have survived to greet Lieutenant Wade Castro when, shortly after dawn the next day, he reported, red-eyed through lack of sleep, to the officer who had received instructions to accompany him in the spacious helicopter waiting on the hard-core, clambered aboard, took the ungainly seeming machine to tree-top level, and, half an hour later, brought it down skilfully in the deserted town's main street within yards of Sheriff Regan's office - just as Colonel Jameson had instructed."

-- Victor Norwood, 'Night of the Black Horror'
(Quoted in "Ghastly Beyond Belief", by Neil Gaiman.)

(Thanks to Mrs Impala for digging this one out for me.)

It's good to be back

Things have been really hectic and stressful at work, which has lead to me not having the time or energy to blog even semi-regularly. But things are starting to look up, so here I am again.

Let me start off with a bashism that caught my fancy:

omega: i like star trek because it's actually pretty realistic. the technology is fiction, but it follows real physics
Kuiper: In Star Trek, whenever there are torpedoes or phaser fire hitting a ship, you can hear the explosions even though they're in space. How is that "real physics?"
omega: in space, explosions are actually louder
omega: because there is no air to get in the way
omega: dumbass

RIP Joseph Weizenbaum

Joseph Weizenbaum, the creator of Eliza, has passed away. That lead to this amusing exchange on the comp.lang.python newsgroup (compiled from various contributors):

How do you feel about creator of Eliza?
What is Eliza?
Does that question interest you?
Well played, sir.
Earlier you said what is Eliza. Do you still feel that way?
I am embarrassed to say that this vaguely disrespectful exchange made me laugh out loud.
Does it bother you that this vaguely disrespectful exchange made you laugh out loud?

Linux users wanting to play with Eliza can run the Emacs text editor and choose "Emacs Psychotherapist" from the Help menu.

Happy Pi Day

March fourteenth 3.14.yy is Pi Day, and as an extra bonus this year it is also Friday.

(Click image for full view.)

Did you remember to eat pie on Pi Day?

Not your usual computer horror story

I found an old archive of emails involving computer horror stories: backups gone bad, deleting the wrong files, and so forth.

Somewhere along the line, somebody asked for the more Stephen King-ish style horror stories, about the system clock running backwards, files undeleting themselves, and so forth. That lead to this anecdote:

Many years ago a tiny little college in the middle of nowhere purchased an NCR tower, then a newfangled contraption. A half-dozen of us were using it for an assembly class. The prof should have made his warnings about TRAP a little more clear. One student runs his program and it suddenly begans spawning processes, rapidly filling the machine. The prof came in, amused, logged on as superuser, and killed a process. Another process was immediately spawned. The prof tried again. He was ignored. He was also no longer amused. After several minutes he gave up and turned off the box. The tower didn't even flinch. He pulled the plug. Nothing. He ripped the back off the box and dug around. Finally he found the fuse and pulled it, killing the machine.

Some of us later claimed we heard laughter as it went down.

(Many times since then I have wished other computers came with a backup battery as standard issue.)

Sometimes my work is fun

Here is a transcript of an IM conversation from work. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

<vlad> Did you tick off the software checklist?
<vlad> That I haven't given you yet?
<darren> i guess that would be a no then
<vlad> I was kind of hoping you had filled it out in the future, then travelled back in time to give it to me now.
<darren> i'll see what i can arrange.
<vlad> Save me printing the form in the first place.
<darren> well you still would have printed the form.
<darren> just later
<sonny> A vlad from a parallel universe with an afro could have printed two, then travelled here to give OUR vlad a copy before he tragically expired from the spear in his lung.
<sonny> The other vlad had the afro, not the parallel universe.

"Sonny" is the same fellow who once broke his monitor by bashing his desk so hard the leg broke and the monitor fell off it. He was upset at the thought that there are people out in the world who don't use Emacs.

Pedagogy

I think this anecdote is amusing. Sad, but also amusing.

As director of communications I was asked to prepare a memo reviewing our company's training programs and materials. In the body of the memo one of the sentences mentioned the "pedagogical approach" used by one of the training manuals. The day after I routed the memo to the executive committee, I was called into the HR director's office and told that the executive vice president wanted me out of the building by lunch. When I asked why, I was told that she wouldn't stand for "perverts" working in her company. Finally he showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand that I be fired, and the word "pedagogical" circled in red.

The HR manager was fairly reasonable and once he looked the word up in his dictionary, and made a copy of the definition to send back to her, he told me not to worry. He would take care of it.

Two days later a memo to the entire staff came out, directing us that no words which could not be found in the local Sunday newspaper could be used in company memos. A month later, I resigned. In accordance with company policy, I created my resignation memo by pasting words together from the Sunday paper.

You can look up the word here.

Microsoft cartoon figures

This is just weird. Microsoft has released a set of collectible cartoon action figures, aimed at developers who attend their training sessions.

(Click image for full view.)

Apparently Microsoft hope that by ascribing "heroic justice crusader" virtues to the toys, people will be attracted to their products:

Slick, quick, and with a fistful of super-style tricks, Windows Vista Sensei is the new karate-kid on the scene. Born in the United States and trained in Tibet, he acquired hardcore martial arts moves, and the wisdom to use these powers wisely. Once he'd perfected his signature preying-mantis kick, the bullies at school stood no chance.

Bad writing and poor grammar

One of the most pernicious myths about English grammar is that you should never split an infinitive. Linguists point out time and time again that the prohibition against splitting infinitives makes no sense in English, and that it was originally derived from Latin and French where it is impossible to split an infinitive.

An infinitive is a verb with the word "to". For example:

• We plan TO GO immediately home.


• At the time I intended TO INVADE only half of Poland.


• My auntie told me TO KICK the guy viciously.

And here they are again split:

• We plan TO immediately GO home.


• At the time I intended TO only INVADE half of Poland.


• My auntie told me TO viciously KICK the guy.

There's no doubt that sometimes splitting infinitives can weaken a sentence, but very often it makes it clearer and stronger. In case you still believe that infinitives should never be split, please read this and this and this.

But then there are still those who continue to spread the superstition that splitting infinitives is bad grammar, like the aptly-named "Lousy Writer". When I first came across his site, I had just spent a delightful half hour or so browsing the World Wide Words site. Compared to Michael Quinion's delightful prose, which has flow and rhythm, going to the Lousy Writer site is like having your eyeballs sand-blasted. I can't imagine taking the Lousy Writer's advice on style matters, or common English idioms.

There's at least one common construction where even the most rabid "Thou
Shalt Not Split Infinitives" mavens end up splitting their infinitives:

• An effective way TO more than DOUBLE your income is by mugging little old ladies.

On a related note, are you shamed by you English?



Click thumbnail for full-sized image.

Does the USA need a stupider motto?

Thanks to Terrifel from the Straight Dope message boards:

1956 was of course the worst year that the United States had ever faced. Wracked by turmoil and social upheaval, beset by enemies within and without, the nation thrashed about like a dying, constipated beast. Whole cities crumbled into ruin amid the chaos as American society teetered on the very brink of collapse. The horror of that time has made the name of Eisenhower synonymous with anarchy even to this day. My father would never talk about how he and his family survived those grim times.

Fortunately, in the very nick of time, legislators realized the true cause of the crisis: America's national motto wasn't stupid enough. Like all of the country's other woes, this disaster could ultimately be traced back to that most sinister of Americans, Thomas Jefferson. The same treacherous impulses that led him to betray his rightful King also inevitably prompted him to sabotage the fledgling nation by giving it the worst possible state motto: E pluribus unum. Not only was this an unforgivably pompous classical reference, its subversive message-- "out of many, one--" would result in a catastrophic tradition of escalating tolerance and unity that was doomed to tear the country apart in less than two hundred years.

Read more.

I think it is time to change the motto from "In God We Trust" to "Try And Stop Us". Or perhaps "Are You Looking At Me?".

Don't mess with the geeks

What happens when a clueless US senator pretending to run his own MySpace webpage hires clueless web developers to do the job for him?

In an attempt to prove how 21st century he is, 70-year-old Senator John McCain hired web developers to create his MySpace page. Unfortunately, they hotlinked to the wrong person's files.

When Mike Davidson learnt that McCain was "stealing" his bandwidth, he decided to play a little joke on the Republican senator:

'I think the idea of politicians setting up MySpace pages and pretending to actually use them is a bit disingenuous, so I figured it was time to play a little prank on Johnny Mac.'

Davidson replaced the image referred to in McCain's profile. However, the new image was a lot less prosaic: it described a political about-face by McCain on the subject of gay marriage and a penchant for partnerships between passionate females.

'The only thing necessary to effectively commandeer McCain's page with my own messaging was to simply replace my own sample image on my server with a newly created sample on my server. No server but my own was touched and no laws were broken. The immaculate hack.'

McCain should consider himself lucky that the image wasn't redirected to Goatse Man.

The article is a little sensational, describing it as "the perfect cybercrime" despite admitting that no laws were broken -- except possibly by McCain, who I'm sure had no authorization to use Davidson's computer resources.

Speaking of hotlinking from MySpace, those of you running your own Apache webserver might find this little rewrite rule handy:


RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([a-z0-9]+\.)?myspace\.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://collect.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=signout [redirect,last]


WARNING: I don't run my own webserver, and consequently I haven't actually tested this. No warranty is given. Use at your own risk. If it blows up your computer and eats your dog, don't come crying to me.

Buy our product or we'll sue you

Two US companies have issues cease and desist letters to Microsoft, Apple, Real Networks and Adobe, warning them to stop not using their Digital Restrictions software.

That's right. Buy our product or we'll sue.

The manufacturers of the DRM software, Media Rights Technologies (MRT) and BlueBeat.com, claim that their product makes water not wet "effectively controls access to copyrighted material", and therefore failing to use their snake-oil product is illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act:

[The DMCA] makes illegal and prohibits the manufacture of any product or technology that is designed for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure which effectively controls access to a copyrighted work or which protects the rights of copyright owners. Under the DMCA, mere avoidance of an effective copyright protection solution is a violation of the act.

How's that again? If you fail to use DRM, that's the same as circumventing the DRM software that you would have used if you had used any.

(Or, to put it another way, if you give a sandwich to your friend without charging him money, you're guilty of being an accessory to theft, because your friend effectively stole from you the money he would have given you if you had asked for any, and therefore you assisted him in his crime. And if your brain hurts about now, you're not alone.)

That's a rather... unusual... interpretation of the DMCA. It's almost certainly a publicity stunt, and unlikely to go any further, but it isn't that far removed from media companies' efforts to outlaw open formats and mandate ineffective and restrictive technologies.

Internet tutorials

Justin a.k.a. _harlequin_ on LiveJournal rants the good rant about technical Internet tutorials:

I've been reliving this experience recently by trying to learn to program AVR microcontrollers in C from internet tutorials for "beginners", written by adults with mental capabilities similar to those of the ten-year-old, who hadn't yet grasped the concept that beginners (funnily enough) don't have an expert’s vast array of existing expertise.
It’s cute in a ten-year-old. But coming from an adult, it makes you want to hit them.

Adding insult to injury, they focus on explaining the obvious as if you are a moron rather than a beginner, whilst being completely oblivious to the number of advanced, unexplained steps they unthinkingly used to get there. If these people wrote cooking tutorials, they would go something like:

First, we start with some flour. This is flour [example of flour]. It is white and powdery. You can buy it at a place called a "shop", or a "supermarket", trading for it using a thing called "money". Next, the muffins come out of the oven, cooked and ready. You tell when they are baked correctly because they are brown. Not too brown [example of too brown], and not too light [example of undercooked muffin], just right.

And now you know how to make muffins!

SOMEONE SLAP THIS IDIOT!

Thanks to Mrs Impala for pointing me at this one.

Here's a lawsuit I'd like to see

Nicolle O'Neill, of Los Angeles, is suing heiress Paris Hilton for billions of dollars for stealing her look.

According to MX on 1st November, page 3, O'Neill filed a suite claiming "emotional distress" because Hilton ripped off her "stiling" [sic] tips. O'Neill claims that Paris Hilton got the idea to expose her "je-streeng underware" [sic] from her.

And they say MX doesn't cover the important news...

Those wacky Japanese

After Friday's 12 hour day at the office, I ended up putting in a mere 11 ¹/₂ hour day today. (Just call me Aussie salaryman-san.) Sigh. There's a few stressful things happening at work at the moment (and by "a few" I mean "a lot"), so when I got home I ended up doing something I don't often do: browsing the web randomly with my brain switched off.

(By the way... à propos of nothing, dark chocolate-coated strawberry licorice is a drug. I can't believe I ate the whole pack in one sitting.)

Purely by chance (by which I mean Google) I came across this fine blog, by Jeff, a 20-something American in Tokyo married to a local woman.

Jeff's back in California, fighting the bureaucrats to get his wife allowed to join him, so he hasn't exactly been posting much as late, but check out the archives. Not all of the pages are exactly Safe For Work, but there's also a lot of fine amateur photography of Japan, so I'm sure you can plead ignorance if you get caught reading a post about bikini-clad Japanese women.

I've just spent the last few hours reading almost the entire blog just for the sheer joy of all the WTF? moments like:

• The rampant Japanese obsession with "cuteness".


• Hard Gay the S&M leather wearing, crotch-thrusting, completely hetro altruist. No, really.


• A starlet famous for the rather unusual way she shows her love of cats.


• Shame and pain on Japanese game shows.


• And Jeff's take on this example of lazy journalism made me laugh.

Jeff clearly loves Japan, but he is no one-eyed Japanophile -- he's fully aware of the dark side of Japan's culture, like the hierarchical salaryman culture, the racism and ignorance, the corporate serfdom, and the reluctance to face up to underlying problems when you can merely paper over the cracks instead. And although he jokes about it, I detect a note of ambivalence about Japan's constant in-your-face sexual imagery. There's a culture gap between the West and Japan, but it isn't insurmountable. And in the meantime, it gives us something to laugh and shudder at.

As the Japanese no doubt do about us.

Oh noes!!! Muh yum cha is stoleded!!!

Oh woe, oh woe!!! The best yum cha restaurant in Melbourne the southern hemisphere the world the entire known Universe, Ocean King in Glen Waverly, has stopped doing yum cha.

(Click image for full view.)

The Onion on opinions

When satire makes more sense than conventional wisdom -- The Onion reports that "38% of people not actually entitled to their opinion":

In a surprising refutation of the conventional wisdom on opinion entitlement, a study conducted by the University of Chicago's School for Behavioral Science concluded that more than one-third of the U.S. population is neither entitled nor qualified to have opinions.

"On topics from evolution to the environment to gay marriage to immigration reform, we found that many of the opinions expressed were so off-base and ill-informed that they actually hurt society by being voiced," said chief researcher Professor Mark Fultz, who based the findings on hundreds of telephone, office, and dinner-party conversations compiled over a three-year period. "While people have long asserted that it takes all kinds, our research shows that American society currently has a drastic oversupply of the kinds who don't have any good or worthwhile thoughts whatsoever. We could actually do just fine without them."

The difficulty, alas, is distinguishing the 38% from the rest...

(Here's a hint though... if you think that "If humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes?" is a good argument against evolution, you're in the 38%.)