From a Globe Technology article on the end of the financial fad for fuel cells: "... [fuel cell] players need to focus on creating a demand pull." Ouch! Y'know, I would've thought that a "demand pull" would be, by definition, something you didn't need to create, but what do I know about marketing? (Props to The Watt.)

I'm reading an article about a particular sick individual, and there's a section about studies done on psychopaths. Here's a quote: "Electrodes were hooked up to the scalps of each test subject to monitor their brainwaves. Some of the words that appeared were nonsense, such as rete; other words were neutral, such as paper; and others were emotionally loaded, such as death. When test subjects spotted a real word, they were asked to push a button." The point, obviously, is to test emotional responses to various kinds of stimuli.

Now, what does your brain do on reading those words? I know what mine does: "Rete, not a word? I'm sure that's gotta be a word!" Sure enough, it is: Webster says "a network esp. of blood vessels or nerves: PLEXUS".

So does this make me some kind of sociopath, or something worse? The only word to inspire an emotional response is the placebo control...

I've been trying to use Open Office more or less exclusively for a few months, to see if it's ready for prime time. Most of the time, it works just fine, has certain advantages over Microsoft's Office (cross platform, price, export to PDF, file compatibility), the disadvantages (mostly startup speed) seem acceptable, and the occasional bugs I find I've been able to report and get fixed. I consider myself reasonably technically sophisticated, though, so it's interesting to also hear what the rest of the world thinks.

I was chatting with someone who I wouldn't have thought did much with computers, but apparently does. He maintain websites for a couple of organizations that he's involved with, and was keen on the whole "Open Source" thing to manage to download and install Open Office. He told he that he had used it for awhile, but had to give it up. The problems? 1. People couldn't read the documents he sent them. You have to do "Save as..." and click OK on a scary dialog to use OO's excellent .doc export filter. 2. "It changed all of my existing documents into its own format." Pretty serious! But what had happened is that after OO told Windows that it would handle .doc files from now on, thank you, Windows changed the icons from Word icons to OO Writer icons. These were sufficient to send him back to Word.

I saw the big flick last night, first one I've seen since the first trilogy. There's spoilers in here (Darth is Luke's DAD!), so stop reading if you care...

I actually liked it. I enjoyed it the most of any of the Star Wars series since the original. I skipped Episodes I and II, so I can't compare to those. The original I saw when I was in the seven-year-old boy demographic, which is exactly where Star Wars is aimed, so that's pretty tough to beat. Some things bothered me, of course: I'm still not sure if the bizarrities of Star Wars physics are more ridiculous than Jedi Council parliamentary process. Issue stated. Answer proposed. "It's agreed, then" and meeting over. Somehow I doubt that Jedi masters, those high strung arrogant knights, would be of one mind without a lot of posturing and discussing. Ignoring Anakin's hissy fits doesn't count: most politics doesn't happen with the new guy, but rather old colleagues you've been spatting with for years. Of course, Star Wars biology is pretty strange too: Padme's pregnancy seemed to progress awfully fast, given that the story of the war seemed to be happening over weeks. And wouldn't being a master of the Force be useful in matters of birth control, prenatal assessment, and such?

I know it's been bandied about as an anti-Bush parable, but I didn't read it that way. It's much closer to (reference deleted in respect of Godwin's Law). And you know, it's heavy-handed, but it works. Later in the evening, in an unrelated political discussion about the democratically elected deliberative body of an organization, I found myself, in all earnestness, saying something like "the Board is incapable of making that decision, it's not structured to be able to have that discussion". Palpatine would have been proud of me. The difference is that I have a good heart. Right? Right?

Oh yeah, sometimes the dialog and acting sucked. But, I expected that, so I give Lucas a pass. I guess I figured that I'd been spoiled by the Darth Side, and if I needed a rich, well-executed dramatic treatment of the story of Anakin, I could always return there. Low expectations are rewarded. But the costumes and special effects were great.

The inimitable Eugene Volokh calls Godwin on Sen. Rick Santorum's comments on the Senate fillibuster debate. I haven't been tracking that conversation too closely, Canada has their own interesting parliamentary politics going on at the moment, but Godwin's law is useful, and I like seeing it get wider play. It states that any sufficiently long and rancorous discussion will eventually invoke a comparison to Hitler, Nazis, or the Third Reich. It doesn't mean that the discussion is necessarily over, indeed, the kind of discussions where Godwin's Law gets applied are the kind which seem to never end. It's more of a sign that any rational exchange of views is over, or I apply it that way anyway.

I also learned recently that the Senator Santorum is one of a remarkably select group, those whose name is being honored by adoption as a word in the English language. I can't think of many others offhand: "rolling in the benjamins" (after Franklin), and "euclidean" (with a small "e"). No, I won't tell you what santorum is, but Google will, if you want to know.

Chuck Olson, a Libertarian in the hopeless-candidate-for-office sense, once gave a nice speech about the Lorax. Worth a link and a look.

In another rehash, I linked the Anarchist FAQ awhile ago, but hadn't read it. Now, for reasons more embarassing than complex, I'm actually trying to go through it, and read it with a good heart. Since I'm writing here, you can guess I'm not succeeding. Here's the first "frequently asked" question I read:

A.3.1 What are the differences between individualist and social anarchists?

While there is a tendency for individuals in both camps to claim that the proposals of the other camp would lead to the creation of some kind of state...

Oh! Of all the vile putdowns! "Your proposal would lead to the creation of some kind of state..." "Yeah? Well, yours relies on social structures evolving spontaneously -- that's just as bad!" Anarchist debating club... Anarchist parliamentary procedure... Once you start, either on anarchist jokes or on the trappings of a state, you just can't stop. *sigh* May the Good Lord grant me the ability to keep a straight face...

I wrote something about the PJ / Groklaw mess. Now esteemed member of the mainstream media Slashdot is reporting that the entire editorial staff of LinuxWorld is resigning. I'm deeply confused: why resign in protest if the offensive individual got canned? Probably I misread the original reports, and the subtle and complex relationships among the multiple parties. Rather than figure it out and fix it, I'll take it as just one more reason to not write about things that I know little about.

So there was this talk on same-sex marriage recently. I wasn't actually there, but dear wife was, so I got a full report. It was odd in several ways. The speaker was nominally pro-same sex marriage, and indeed was in one. She started with the standard disclaimer that, despite vile attempts by the right to so characterize it, same-sex marriage was not in any sense about altering or destroying traditional marriage. And then she went on to discuss the evil patriarchal nature of traditional marriage, and why and how it ought to be utterly destroyed. So much for internal consistency. And wonderful direct evidence of the secret agenda of the same-sex marriage crowd, should anyone on the right require more. It's not the first time I've heard this argument from political gays, actually. I usually associate it with an older generation, and the political right, groups like the Log Cabin Republicans: we don't need marriage, let the breeders keep it, it's everything we're rejecting, trying to get away from. It's an argument that makes sense: against marriage, though, not for it.

And yet. If she was so against marriage, why was she in one? Indeed, why had she gone to great trouble and expense to get one? Marriage, is, after all, voluntary (at least these days). Her words (marriage is bad) are discordant with her actions (I like my marriage). Actions speak louder than words, I guess, but I think the dissonance is real. Breathing bundles of contradiction, all of us.

Are bloggers journalists? Can you distinguish? Is what I'm doing right now just another form of mainstream media? What rights and responsibilities do bloggers have? This has been debated lots in blogs (of course), law courts, legislatures, and perhaps even a dead-trees op-ed or two.

In tracking the recent canning of infamous pro-SCO hack Maureen O'Gara from LinuxToday, one substantial difference was made clear to me. Journalists can get fired. Well, I suppose bloggers can get fired too, and it happens all the time, but fire a blogger and they lose the job, not the blog. Fire a journalist, and their words stop appearing in print in your paper. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. Bloggers are most akin to someone who owns their own newspaper, and uses it to push their own agenda (not that that would ever happen in the offline world). Bloggers are not journalists in the conventional sense, employees of an owner, with the checks and balances of that system in place. Usually that's a good thing. What rights and privileges they (we?) should have is not obvious to me.

Motorcycles have had shaft drive for years, nice to see it come to bikes too. I think it's not quite as efficient as a chain, but more reliable and lower maintenance. If you'd like continously variable gears, that's also possible, though not everyone thinks it's necessary.

First day on the bike in awhile. Windy as heck this morning (flags straight out, ripping), so I tried to preserve the assist for playing with traffic. Just blasting through the wind is taxing on the battery, because the motor is geared high, so draws lots of current at low speed / high load. (Thus, the thoughts about transmissions.) Mostly I just pedalled, which though slow, worked fine. If I wanted a bit of assist, though, that's not so easy. There are two problems with the throttle. One is ergonomic: it's a thumb controlled pot, and bumps jitter it around. There's no doubt a reason motorcycles have adopted the twist grip for throttle control. The other is electronic: I suspect the pot controls the effective battery voltage, using PWM. But until the effective voltage exceeds the back emf of the motor at the current speed, there's no assist at all. So the entire range of available assist is wrapped into a short range between some partial throttle position, a position that shifts with increasing speed, and the top. It's as if the accelerator pedal didn't work until you'd pushed it down 3/4 of the way, then leaped forward. (Jerking you around, resulting in the pedal wiggling more, etc.) The interface is wrong: it should control current, which turns into torque, not voltage. This would make sense for a cruise control, where you wanted to set the speed, but for throttles we're used to acceleration. The bottom line is, at speed, the Currie thumb throttle is only good for on/off, though it's nice to have fine control for maneuvering at parking speeds.