In LA

Two notes of note:

• Apple has recalled the Ultracompact (sic) USB Power Adapter that they provided with the iPhone 3G. It is not that the device will burst into flame or do anything so catastrophic; The problem is simply that the metal prongs aren’t perfectly anchored in that delicious little white plastic cube, and “under certain conditions” the prongs break off and remain in the electrical outlet when the adapter is unplugged. As anyone who has ever before seen two shiny and arcing bits of metal sticking out of an electrical socket can tell you, it is humanly impossible to resist immediately grabbing barehandedly at such conductors. Y’all iPhone cult members can get your USB Power Adapters exchanged for free from Apple.
• Some (insult deleted as I don’t want to be hacked) college student cracked open Alaska Governor, Republican Vice Presidential candidate, and former Miss Wasilla Sarah Palin’s yahoo email account¹ and posted its contents online.
  
  3/o2d399Jp says "arrf"
  According to the cracker’s 1st person account, he simply reset her yahoo email password by guessing his way through the security questions that are part of the “I forgot my password” process on Yahoo and on many other sites. I long ago realized the vulnerability of such identity verification processes which use simplistic questions like “What is your pet’s name?”. This is why for years I’ve been using a “strong password generator” application to make sure my pets’ names all are of sufficient length and contain enough symbols and numbers to be difficult to guess. You should do the same.

That is all .

1. Yes, I think there ought to be a law restricting public servants from using private email servers for government business simply to evade scrutiny, and yes I think it sounds like possible evidence tampering that her emails have conveniently been deleted given that there are ongoing investigations that have subpoenaed Gov. Palin’s email messages, but I still think it is sick and wrong that someone has cracked her account and posted the information online. [↩]

Article that made me laugh this morning:

Obama Deletes Another Unread MoveOn.org E-Mail

“They already know I’m going to vote for Obama,” Obama added. “The only people who sign up for this thing are Democrats anyway. They’re just preaching to the choir.”

…

“I know this election is important and everything,” Obama added. “But these people seriously need to relax.”

Love the Onion.

A remarkable headline?

I took a look at Google News this afternoon and noticed the following remarkable headline, “Palin Misleads: Accuses Obama of Supporting Tax Hikes”. That headline is not remarkable on its face, but what took me by surprise was that it was apparently the headline of an article on FOXNews.com (slogan “We Report. You Decide.”). I decided long ago that Fox News is partisan in the general direction of the current Republican party, so I did a double-take when noting that they’d published an article with a headline so sharply critical of the GOP Vice Presidential candidate.

Click image to see screenshot at full size.

I clicked through and read the article. Though it wasn’t the attack-dog piece on Palin that the headline had led me to expect, it did include some salient criticisms of her recent statements –and was more balanced than I’ve come to expect from Fox. Then I noticed that the article’s headline had been defanged from the original, and now reads,”Palin Accuses Obama of Supporting Tax Hikes”. My guess is that when the article was first posted, the headline included the word “Misleads”, and this is the headline that was present when the Google News bot crawled the Fox News site, indexed the article, and built the database that is used to auto-generate Google News pages. Sometime in the 10 minutes that elapsed from the moment I loaded the Google News front page and clicked the Fox News article, the editors at Fox News changed the article’s headline to change the focus from the fact that Palin made misleading statements to the simple fact that she made accusations. I wonder if the contents of the article were similarly adjusted.

Click image to see screenshot at full size.

As an aside, I’d encourage anyone who is curious about the respective Obama and McCain tax plans to take a look at the infographic and discussion on this page. That infographic is an attempt by some statistically-minded bloggers to bring some clarity to the table and correct the distortions and mistakes made by many such graphics recently published in print media. Rathergate proved that blogs and internet forums can make up a powerful “5th estate” to keep tabs on and correct the media’s failings. I think it’s interesting to see that this netizen watchdog role encompasses even infographics.

Technorati Tags: Fifth Estate, Fourth Estate, Fox News, McCain, Media, Obama, Palin, Politics

The US Census bureau¹ has come out with a report which states that ethnic and racial minorities will outnumber the majority by the year 2042². I don’t know if the Census bureau uses the word “whites” because I can’t find their report online, but the Associated Press promptly wrote a headline declaring,”White Americans no longer a majority by 2042“, and the Detroit Free Press declared,”Whites will be US minority group by 2042, Census predicts“.

But “White” and “minority” are surprisingly mutable social constructs in the USA. History tells me that in the U.S., whoever is considered to be on top of the socioeconomic ladder at a given period of time automatically becomes part of the “White” blob. At one point, all those Italian immigrants to the US were not considered to be White, and the Whiteness of Irish and European Jewish immigrants was also in doubt.

I bet there were similar if more clearly alarmist headlines back in the early 1900s, shouting to anyone who would listen that in a few decades Whites would be outnumbered by these non-Anglo immigrant masses. In 2042, when the ethnic and racial groups included under the White banner include Latinos, Hispanics, and East Asians³ , I fully expect to see identical headlines to those of today about how “Whites will lose their majority status by 2076″.

America has always bubbled with immigration, cultural exchange and conflict, opportunity and oppression, and demographic shifts. My rational mind suspects there’s little new about this latest batch of news, though I am planning to hurry up and learn some Español, Italian, and Yiddish just in case.

Technorati Tags: race, whitey

1. Motto: “Page Last Modified: May 20, 2004″ [↩]
2. Perhaps not coincidentally, 2042 is also the year in which a computer-generated Charles Grodin will replace Chris Tucker as Jackie Chan’s co-star in the ever-popular Rush Hour franchise. [↩]
3. If that assumption sounds improbable to your 2008 racial spidey-sense, please reevaluate my argument in 2038. [↩]

From saveourtacotrucks.org:

Led by District 1 County Supervisor Gloria Molina, the L.A. Board of Supervisors has passed new restrictions that will effectively eliminate taco trucks from our streets. Under Supervisor Molina’s new rules, taco trucks will have to change location every hour, or face a misdemeanor charge carrying a $1000 fine and/or jail. Yes, jail.

Taco Trucks are a special facet of Los Angeles, and something we don’t want to lose. Though this ordinance currently affects just unincorporated parts of L.A., that’s 65% of the County. And of course it opens up the doors for legislation closer to home too.

I happen to think taco trucks are cuter than the average brick and mortar restaurant, and always like seeing them parked around the city, serving their wares. If you also think taco trucks are charming or useful, and don’t want to see them disappear from Los Angeles, you could do worse than spend a few minutes visiting the saveourtacotrucks.org website. There you can download printable posters, sign petitions, that sort of thing. If you’re wondering what a taco truck is, there are plenty of photos of taco trucks on flickr for you to peruse.

Technorati Tags: food, hollywood, los angeles, mexican food, politics, taco, taco truck

A busy intersection in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. 5/2006

Yesterday I walked to lunch along a busy street in Hollywood, having a very difficult time hearing my friend on my cell phone as busses and trucks rattled past. I marveled at the amazing amount of noise I encounter on a daily basis, and thought of how peaceful the aural landscape of the future city will be if one day all internal combustion engines are replaced by electric equivalents.

There are a ton of Toyota Prios¹ zooming around the streets of LA fairly quietly using their electric motors, the first wave of the new sound of transportation. Sounds like progress to me.

So I’m hoping that a new piece of legislation introduced in the US House of Representatives, the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2008, doesn’t result in a mandatory minimum noise level for all vehicles. Here are the details on the Act, courtesy of its supporters at the National Federation of the Blind (NFB):

The bill requires the Secretary of Transportation, within ninety days of its enactment, to commence a two-year study to determine the best means to provide the blind and other pedestrians with information about the location, motion, speed, and direction of vehicles. Upon completion of the study, the Secretary will report the findings of the study to Congress and, within ninety days, establish a minimum vehicle safety standard for all new vehicles sold in the United States. Automobile manufacturers will have two years to comply with the vehicle safety standard.

Some folk over at treehugger.com wonder if such concern is overkill, asking How Many Blind People Have Been Hit By A Prius? One answer can be found in an LA times article on the bill, “While the organization is not aware of people being struck by cars they couldn’t hear, NFB President Marc Maurer has said he fears it’s only a matter of time.”

I’d like to think that the desire for a quiet environment and the desire for blind people to be able to freely and safely navigate the streets don’t have to be at odds. Hopefully if the bill passes, the required study will show that tire and electric engine noise alone will suffice to warn pedestrians (especially given that as more and more hybrids take to the streets the total level of road noise will go down, so that the sound of approaching electric vehicles will be less masked by the din). Or maybe someone can develop a wristwatch for the vision-impaired which would use sonar or transponders built into every car to notify them of approaching traffic?

I’d prefer any solution to one that results in a future of roads filled with chirping, whistling, or beeping cars.

Technorati Tags: accessibility, ambient sound, Legislature, safety, sound pollution

1. the plural of Prius if treated as a 2nd declension Latin noun [↩]

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, “the most powerful investigative panel in Congress” according to the Gray Lady¹ is spending time investigating whether baseball pitching great Roger Clemens used steroids back in 1998.

If my understanding is correct, this means that my taxes are funding an investigation into whether a ball player took pills and injections with the goal of making him throw a round white object a little faster. While I will grant that one of our government’s core functions is to make sure that the scourge known as the designated hitter rule doesn’t spread beyond the American league…

–but seriously, what an incredible waste of time, resources, and priorities. Let Major League Baseball and the World Anti-Doping Agency deal with the case. If the league, a private enterprise, wants to ban the use of such substances, let them spend their own money policing it themselves. It’s bad enough that public money goes to fund sports stadiums for the use of private businesses.

At this rate, the government will soon be holding congressional hearings into whether the gladiators on American Gladiators are juiced, whether Tyra Banks’ breasts are real, or whether members of the Grateful Dead (or their fans) used a lot of LSD.

Should I care more about this? Am I just becoming a cranky old man?

1. the most powerful newspaper in the land, after USA Today and The Onion [↩]

This is a pretty amazing story about a soldier who was hit by an RPG (rocket propelled grenade) that did not detonate and instead remained stuck in his body, and the extraordinary efforts and risks taken by his fellow soldiers to save his life:

Military Medical Team Makes the ‘Toughest Call’; Unexploded Rocket-Propelled Grenade Impales Army Private in Afghanistan

Regardless how I feel about war, I always find the sacrifices that soldiers are willing to make for each other to be extremely admirable and inspiring. Many of us might be willing to risk our own lives to save others, but some face this test day in and day out as part of their job. Much respect.

(post has been edited because I initially assumed the article was about events in Iraq and missed the fact that even the headline said “Afghanistan”. Doh.)

In response to a question from the Associated Press, Yahoo said:

Yahoo is dismayed that citizens in China have been imprisoned for expressing their political views on the Internet.

The Chinese government thought about replying,”We just love it when foreigners try to tell us how to run our country.” But they came to one of two realizations:

1. that the anti-cultural-imperialism dodge only works when the cultural imperialists are in the wrong.
2. that as soon as a local company (perhaps one of Yahoo’s business partners) completely replicates all of Yahoo’s functionality they can cut the unruly foreign company loose and promote a local company who plays by party rules.

Shi Tao, the Chinese reporter Yahoo helped put behind bars, is due to be released from prison in 2015. I wrote about him in this earlier, related post.

It feels like the world is going crazy, with the locus of craziness currently hovering over the East coast of the U.S.A.

1. Virginia Tech killing spree –good god! Hopefully the fact that the killer is getting more than his 15 minutes of fame by sending out a press packet in between killings won’t encourage other publicity-hungry violently-disturbed individuals to follow suit.
2. Congress and Justice Department in standoff –the Justice Department appears to just be ignoring a subpoena for missing and redacted portions of documents issued by the House Judiciary Committee. I tend to think that a lack of accountability at high levels within the government is a bad thing.
3. Supreme Court upholds Federal ban on an abortion procedure. A procedure that, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists includes no exceptions for the physical or mental health of the mother. According to the vast but fumbling-towards-accuracy online encyclopedia Wikipedia: “The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that bans must include exception for threats to the woman’s life, physical health, and mental health”. Guess it’s time to revise that entry.
4. Chocolate under attack! This is an order of magnitude less crazy than the other items, but it bugs me nonetheless, and I need something of less earth-shattering important than the first 3 items to think about as a cool-down exercise: Hershey and other big choco manufacturers are asking the U.S. Food an Drug Administration to “permit them to replace cocoa butter, chocolate’s key ingredient, with vegetable oils and, in the case of milk chocolate, replace whole milk with milk protein concentrates“. If these companies are not going to continue to make chocolate out of the ingredients that define the essence of chocolate, they should come up with a new name and not try to legally redefine the word “chocolate” to mean any sweet bar of saturated fat that happens to be brown. One chocolatier has posted a more nuanced take on the issue.