Burtonia Blogs

New Internet Land Rush?

2008-06-23T14:03:00.000-07:00

ICANN has kept a tight reign on top-level-domain names (they are at the end of a domain name - things like .com, .net, .biz, etc.). Now they are mulling over* the idea of opening these TLD's up completely. This means we could soon see the long awaited .sucks TLD (think of the possibilities!), not to mention .xxx (which I have always favored contra the ridiculous and futile protests of tech-ignorant social conservatives).

So if you missed out on the .com cybersquatting boom, this might be your chance.

* The article is confusing because it confuses domain names and top-level domain names, which are different things. Unintentionally humorous (to geeks like me) quote: Hundreds of new domain names could be created by the end of the year, rising to thousands in the future.

Distraction Device

2008-06-15T05:54:00.000-07:00

More on One-Laptop-Per-Child with some academic research showing it's worse than a waste of time and money - it could actually harm the kids who get it!

Let me take this opportunity to pile on OLPC even more. One of their fund-raising mechanisms was called "Give one, get one" or "Get one, give one". Something like that, with the emphasis on "get one". The way it worked was If I paid for two, one would be sent to the poor kid with a bright shining smile in some far-away country. Then I would not only get the warm feeling inside from my own wonderful do-goodery, but I would also get my very own OLPC PC! This perfectly sums up everything that is wrong with America and American charity. I do something that someone tells me is charitable, noble, and self-sacrificial, and then I get a shiny new toy. The really funny thing about this is that I'm certain all the geeks and semi-geeks who participated in this program unboxed the thing, played with it for an hour, and then left it in a corner. Now it's covered with pizza delivery boxes, iPhone 2.0 packaging materials*, and a couple of issues of Computer Gaming World.

* Or will be, after July 11th.

OLPC 2G2BT

2008-06-13T13:28:00.000-07:00

The One Laptop Per Child initiative has not lived up to the dreams of its progenitors. I am grateful for failures like this. And to think they wanted to make 150 million of these useless toys. I am a skeptic concerning technology in education, but more like a rabid reactionary when it comes to shipping computers to countries plagued by food riots.

iPhone 2 Breaking News

2008-06-06T12:42:00.000-07:00

The hype, insanity, and idolatry surrounding the iPhone always amazes me, but I keep having to add a few extra ticks to my amazement meter. Check out this article in Forbes (yes Forbes) about mysterious pallets at an Apple warehouse. It even comes with an impossible-to-parody slideshow. Stop the presses: we may have found where Apple is storing the new iPhone.

For me, this sums up everything that is wrong about America.

Software Suggests Evolution

2008-05-28T06:42:00.000-07:00

It would be difficult to overestimate my contempt for stories like this: someone writes a program that purports to explain how the capacity for religious belief evolved. Here is my favorite part:

The model assumes, in other words, that a small number of people have a genetic predisposition to communicate unverifiable information to others.

The researchers ought to have had a lot of personal experience with that.

Judas Revisionism Revisionism

2008-05-25T13:41:00.000-07:00

The carnival surrounding the the translation of the Gospel of Judas a couple of years back now has turned into a farce. Turns out even the fake Gnostic gospel bearing his name isn't really very positive toward the man. National Geographic and the agenda-drive scholars on the project made basic errors. Devastating recap here.

CreateSpace vs. Lulu

2008-05-23T07:03:00.001-07:00

While pursuing my self-publishing adventures, I have done some research into the various options for getting a book professionally printed. A whirlwind of creative destruction is just revving up to tear through publishing, so it's a fun time to have a manuscript in hand.

Publish-on-demand is a big driver of these changes. Instead of keeping stacks and stack of books in a warehouse, ready to ship out to bookstores, a manufacturer just prints off a single book when an order comes in. This works great for virtual bookstores like Amazon. On the internet, two of the biggest players are Lulu and CreateSpace (a subsidiary of Amazon). I've used both services, so this post will be an effort to compare the two.

Characteristic	Description	Lulu	CreateSpace
Cost	If you want to print more than about three books, CreateSpace is the hands-down winner. The wholesale cost for my book (~250 pages) is $4.15 at CreateSpace, and $9.50 at Lulu. You can get volume breaks at Lulu, but the quotes they gave me were not impressive.		X
Time	Lulu's turnaround time is much better than CreateSpace's. CreateSpace has an approval process that takes at least a day. Plus shipping is slower.	X
Shipping	Lulu seems to print and ship a little faster. Their shipping costs are much lower (they offer a Media Mail option). However, once a CreateSpace book is in the Amazon system, you can take advantage of free shipping and Amazon Prime. I'll give them both a nod here.	X	X
Revisions	Because CreateSpace requires a proof for every revision, Lulu is more practical if you are rev'ing something a lot. Plus the high shipping means at least $10 for every turn of the crank at CreateSpace.	X
Amazon	Since CreateSpace is owned by Amazon, it's free to get an ISBN and get your book into the Amazon system. Also, as I said before, all of Amazon's great shipping deals apply. This is an astonishing thing - to be able to get a book into the greatest book distrubtion system in the world for nothing.		X
Distribution	Lulu has other distribution systems that I don't really care about. Consequently, I have not investigated them. Lulu charges $300, though, to get it into Amazon or any other system.	X
Profitibility	This is a labor of love for me, so I don't care about the money. But if I did, CreateSpace is a much better deal. For the same retail price, the author keeps a lot more of the dough.		X
Quality	This is close, but I would give this one to Lulu. The CreateSpace books are not as uniform, in size or cover registration. It's not a big deal and you would never know unless you had a stack of them in front of you. None of the CreateSpace books have been bad, but I just noticed the minor inconsistencies.	X
Cover Options	Lulu offers softcover, hardcover, and spiral bound (great for reports or editor's manuscripts). CreateSpace only has trade paperback.	X

Bottom line: I am using CreateSpace. I think Lulu would be great for a business user who has lots of really low-volume kinds of books (reports, etc.).

My Dream Desk?

2008-05-15T09:05:00.000-07:00

HT: Tom King. His sharp eyes also spotted the one thing that would not appear on Jeff's desk. Can you see it? Hint: product from a company hq'd at One Infinite Loop.

Most Hated Toy in Burtonia: Gone!

2008-05-06T06:34:00.000-07:00

At the height of the Chinese Great Leap Forward, even small towns and villages had steel quotas. Since it was impossible for them to comply with the insane demands of the communist planners, the hapless peasants would melt down their agriculture implements and submit the resulting "product." Another example of how socialism is most adept at subtracting value from industrial inputs.

Until yesterday, we had just such an endeavour in our home, thanks to the Crayola Crayon Maker. It made crayons in the same way the Chinese peasants made steel in the 1950's. You take a perfectly good existing crayons, heat them to about 200 degrees, and pour the burning hot liquid into a mold. The end result is crayon slag that comes in colors like "dark mucous" or "abyssal mud." Below is a picture of a couple of these excreta.

The whole idea is so preposterous that one might expect to find it on the store shelf next to the Lil' Woodsman Junior Chainsaw or Baby's First Soldering Iron. For me it sums up everything wrong with America: cheap plastic landfill fodder, pointless and wasteful "activities," and indulgence of children. But since my boys absolutely love everything that has to do with wanton destruction, it was one of their favorite toys. So how did this state of affairs come about?

Mom was up late scraping crayon wax off the floor. Now to figure out what is the second-most hated toy in Burtonia.

I've Been Expelled

2008-04-19T11:04:00.001-07:00

I granted Scott Nehring an exclusive on my "Expelled" review. You can find it here. Short take: disappointment.

Many are hyping this film as a skirmish in the culture wars and are therefore tracking theatre attendance closely. For what it's worth, the 7:20pm showing in Oakdale, MN was nearly sold out last night.

March of the Scientismists

2008-04-18T08:21:00.000-07:00

Have a moral or ethical problem with a particular line of scientific inquiry? Just get out of the way. That according to the "Hinxton Consortium", an international group of medical researchers and ethicists. Here is what they say?

Societies have the authority to regulate science, and scientists have a responsibility to obey the law. However, policy-makers should refrain from interfering with scientific inquiry unless there is a substantial justification for doing so that reaches beyond disagreements based solely on divergent moral convictions.

Anyone see any problems with that?

Darwin and Hitler

2008-04-16T05:45:00.000-07:00

The Expelled movie has roused evolutionists to fury because it links Darwinism with Nazism. Put this down as another reservation I have about this film. Not that there wasn't a link. It's really funny to watch the materialists tie themselves into knots trying to deny and explain away the obvious. I was just at the National Holocaust Museum's traveling exhibit titled "Nazi Medicine." One of the first pictures you see when you enter is a big picture of Darwin. One of the last things you read as you leave is about Dr. Mengele's later writings while in Brazilian exile. They concerned Darwinism. It's not a great leap to connect the stuff in between with Darwinism.

That said, I question the strategy here. No Darwinist today advocates genocide (euthanasia is a trickier question). More importantly neither of the following are true:

* Without Darwinism, the Holocaust would not have happened.
* Given Darwinism, the Holocaust was inevitable.

So what's the point? It's a variety of the genetic fallacy (the cousin of your theory undergirded Nazism!). Again, I wish a high profile vehicle for education and communication like this one would stick to more straightforward arguments in favor of design in science.

Reservations for Expelled

2008-04-12T13:09:00.001-07:00

The title's a cheap pun. I fully intend to be at a theatre on opening and it won't be for Harold and Kumar, as much as those two lovable mugs warm my heart, lift my spirits, and tickle my funny bone.* But from what little I know of "Expelled", I'm a little uneasy. I understand that at least some of the film will take up the issue of academic censorship of Intelligent Design.

I believe that whining about persecution is a weak kind of persuasion. I hope the film concentrates on the science and avoids trying to gin up sympathy. This argument will be won on its merits, and appeals to "fairness" are going to play right into the Scientismists** hands.

Whatever the content, this movie is an utterly polarizing Rorschach test. The reactions I've read have been either "Sleazy but ameteurish propaganda" or "Even better than The King of Kong". My promise to you: my review will be honest, even brutally honest. Because brutality and honesty are two great tastes that taste great together.

* Cheap sarcasm.
** Cheap neologism.

Red in Tooth and Claw

2008-04-09T04:59:00.001-07:00

This is the funniest thing I'll read all day: the world famous polar bear Knut has committed grave icthi-cide. He has wantonly murdered ten carp in full view of his sensitive admirers at the Berlin Zoo. Schrecklich! "There is speculation that hand-reared Knut killed the carp just for fun."

Build Your Own Tank

2008-04-07T13:35:00.000-07:00

I have lots of questions about this story: a college student builds 1/2 scale German tank for use playing paintball.

1. College students have $10k laying around to build tanks?
2. Why the dickens did he build a Tiger I when he could have built a Tiger II?
3. What's the best way to make sure none of my sons build a tank when they're supposed to be doing college-y kinds of things?
4. What kind of clearance does it need? Because my paintball field has a lot of stumps...

Beyond Fitna

2008-04-06T05:36:00.000-07:00

Work is already underway on a tu coque* response to Fitna,** a great short film documenting the Koranic inspiration for Muslim terrorism around the world. An Iranian organization is making "Beyond Fitna" in reply. Here is what they want to accomplish:

'Beyond Fitna' focuses on the orders given to worldwide Christians in the (distorted version of) Bible for stoking violence, committing genocide, attacking others, beheading and burning women and children who have been taken into captivity. The documentary recycles film clips from crimes committed by extremist Christians under the inspirations of the said Bible teachings, and aims to provide a response to the allegations made by Pope Benedict XVI, who called Islam a religion of violence after misunderstanding certain Organic verses.

I think the translation from Farsi suffers a bit. I think they are responding to putative insults to Islam, not Whole Foods (but I'm happy to supply both!) I'm looking forward to this film. I am genuinely interested in learning about these extremist Christians. I thought I was familiar with most expressions of Christianity around the world, but I guess I can always learn more.

My hope is that they get the release date out quickly so I can reserve that day. I need time to make some signs and come up with some catchy death threats for the insulters and blasphemers of Chistianity.

* Roughly translated: "Yeah? Well so's your mother!"

** Warning: it's not for the faint of heart, but I highly recommend it.

Giving It Away

2008-04-06T05:15:00.000-07:00

I am a great believer in the new distribution mechanisms for creative content that are ripping through the old-line media conglomerates. Everyone younger than 55 understands how this is affecting music and even movies. For books, print-on-demand outfits like lulu are changing the game (but look out, here comes the 800 pound gorilla).

Another avenue authors are using to bypass the traditional publishing game is free podcasts. Check out this site. Some writers have developed such a following this way that the dead tree guys are now knocking at their doors.

About halfway through writing my book, I thought it would be cool to record my story as an audiobook and post it on my website. Looks like I'll be doing something like something like that, but using more tested infrastructure. This should be fun!

Moral Quandary - Help Needed!

2008-04-03T08:45:00.001-07:00

Is this ethical? Not legal, but ethical?

I would really like to do it, because I hate waste, and junk mail waste drives me crazy. As usual, I fret about the moral implications.

Please comment.

Almost Fooled

2008-04-01T06:54:00.000-07:00

My blood was starting to boil as I read this, until I got about halfway down. What a chump I am.

DNA=Sum Total of Biological Information?

2008-03-27T11:25:00.000-07:00

Reading this informative post on recent research into Tuatara genetics, I came across this startling claim:

The authors do not discuss the more fundamental question of how far DNA information is responsible for the form of organisms, or whether the form of organisms is determined by other information embodied in embryonic cells. This question is not being asked by Darwinists, who insist that all biological information must be traced back to the genome. However, some biologists (including those advocating Intelligent Design) are actively exploring alternatives.

I don't necessarily believe the part about Darwinists insisting that all biological information comes from the genome. To me, it's always been obvious that the cell contains a lot more information than just that found in DNA. To say other wise is tantamount to saying all the information needed to build a house can be found in the bill of materials. I find it hard to credit that evolutionists deny something so obvious.

Of course, when you tote up all the information in a cell outside the nucleus, it just moves the goalposts for abiogenesis that much further back.

A Blog Post for Jesus

2008-03-24T06:28:00.001-07:00

When did adding "Jesus" to any phrase make it automatically risible and ridiculous? It's been coming on for a long time, but gradually, like a glacier. This morning, the glacier hit my house when I linked to Richard Dawkins' review of the pro-Intelligent Design movie Expelled. The howler monkeys* have crashed Dawkins' server in their enthusiasm, but its title is "Lying for Jesus." The "For Jesus" part, we understand, is to elicit a smirk before we dive into his dissection of the movie.**

There are lots of recent examples (Bong Hits for Jesus, Jesus Camp, etc., etc. - just go search for "Jesus" at dailykos). It's entered American culture so forcefully, that I realized this morning that I've heard Christians use the word "Jesus" in an ironic way.

* The name "howler monkeys" was proudly borne by pro-evolutionists on the old origins faq site. It was an apt description of their loud and incessant screeching.

** In his titanic rage and indignation at the mere existence of dissent from philosophical materialism, he picked up a chain saw rather than a scalpel, but this post does not concern his review.

Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Children's Illistrators

2008-03-19T05:36:00.000-07:00

I put up a guru project invitation for a cover for my book (I'm going to be using lulu to print copies for friends, families, and the beta test*). So far, I have over forty proposals, and more come in every day. As a point of comparison, I regularly post programming and graphic arts projects, and I rarely get more than ten submissions. Even sadder for them is that an old friend has agreed to do the cover for me as a favor.

* I will be having a number of boys (and maybe some brave girls), most who don't know me, read the book and provide feedback.

Adulthood's End

2008-03-18T15:03:00.000-07:00

Another part of my teen universe passes: Arthur C. Clarke dead at age 90. All you literary types would probably go for Childhood's End, but I liked Rendevous with Rama better. Star Wars fans, move along. Nothing to see here.

London City Mission

2008-03-18T06:24:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a great fat work of serious history called Earthly Powers. The subtitle summarizes it well: "The clash of religion and politics in Europe, from the French Revolution tot he Great War." It's slow going for my plaque-encrusted brain, but edifying and enlightening. I picked it up because it promised to sketch the substitution of political for spiritual salvation, over the course of the 19th century.

It's all that, but I've learned a great deal more. One of the things I was only aware of by passing reference was the great Victorian charitable empires built in the second half of that century. I was amazed and inspired to discover more details of those gigantic endeavours. One of the greatest was the London City Mission, or LCM. Evangelicals founded it and send many hundreds of missionaries into London to minister in the slums. The hardships and dangers they faced rival those confronted by their colleagues who went overseas. I eagerly await this book to find out more.*

LCM still exists, and wonder of wonders, it survived the 20th century with its faith intact.

* It's endorsed by Keller, for all his fans out there!

The Sum of One's Purchases

2008-03-17T06:21:00.000-07:00

One of the things that bemuses me about 21st century life in American is the extent to which people who most loudly lay claim to non-conformity, creativity, open-mindedness, and a rejection of crass materialism define their identity by the junk they buy, and who they buy it from. I laughed loudly and heartily* at the following quote from this great article:

…people who drive hybrid cars are 78% more likely than the general population to be highly creative….That is, they are inventive and imaginative and also tend to be emotionally sensitive and intellectually curious… They tend to be more open-minded, more spontaneous, and more assured of their ability to lead others, the Mindset Media found.

Just how much of people's junk is a not-so-subtle message to others: "I am a great and good person."?

* Laughing at odd things like this indicates either curmudgeonliness or incipient insanity. You choose.