Updates

I'm trying not to neglect this blog entirely, so here's a few tidbits for you.

Latest posts on Castles of Air:

• Search and destroy missions for your bugs
  
• I dream of recursion
  
• Speed up your programs with Big O (part 1)
  
• A retrospective on the terrifying millenium bug

Also: Response to Chuck Colson at the Atheist Experience (roughly 8 months in the making)

What's up with me:

I am getting my house ready to sell.  It's mostly painted, and my contractor is working on redoing some of the floors this weekend.  We had a garage sale this weekend, in which I sold much stuff which originally cost thousands of dollars altogether for 1, 5, or 10 bucks each.  It was, um, not fun.  Hard work and kind of demoralizing, but the end result (besides a couple hundred bucks to pay the contractor) is that most of the loose stuff that was in my house is now largely gone, organized, or ready to sell to Half Price Books or Craig's List bargain hunters.  I guess it's a little liberating.

I'm still holding onto my job in Temple and even sort of liking it.  The work is very purpose-driven at the moment: we have a laundry list of short feature requests from a client, and we're working through these with the intent of making them happy, as well as preparing to show off the improvements to a bunch of other buyers.  I feel valued professionally, which is a good feeling.  That will be confirmed if I get hired full-time in April.

My newest blog

I've let this blog stagnate for a while, mainly because I've been extremely busy working on the Atheist Experience blog a lot.

Now I've got a new blog which I would like to hype.  I just wrote my second post on Castles of Air, which is dedicated to issues focusing on software development.  This is intended to be my professional blog.  I want to keep it separate from the other two blogs, because I would like to be able to show it to professional colleagues without worrying about mixing in my feelings about politics or religion.

This will probably make me post here even less often, since programming and other nerdy stuff were topics that I used to discuss on Kazim's Korner.  However, since my professional blog has no followers yet, I will make a habit of putting a link from here to each post that I make on Castles of Air.  But don't rely I hope that will help to improve traffic flow of both this blog and CoA.  The other blog is of course a nerdy endeavor, but computers are everywhere in our lives, and even non-programmers might be interested in looking inside the process.

My first two posts:

• Programming thought-stuff
  
• Coding is both theoretical and experimental
  

Fish in a barrel: another look at Conservapedia

In my estimation, the sort of far-right people who are drawn to something like Conservapedia, similar to Christian homeschoolers, are characterized mainly by a resentment of authoritative knowledge. The whole notion that some people know more than other people about stuff, unless the source is a personal revelation from a higher power, is anathema. This permeates everything they think about. The media is a vast conspiracy to bring down good, decent men like GWB. Scientists are priests of Satan whose primary goal is to undermine God's word. Public schools are instruments of evil to get to your kids. The entire frakkin' world is run from the shadows by Scary Foreigner George Soros, or minions laying the groundwork for Antichrist -- the two of which are not mutually exclusive. Etc.

Nobody except a trusted religious leader has the right to tell you what to think. Evidence that stands in contradiction to your point of view can be safely disregarded, because the people with the authority of being educated wield awesome power and they are thoroughly skilled at trying to trick you. The only way to avoid falling under their sway is to skip straight to your faith, so you can bypass learning things.

Wikipedia may be kind of a mess, but my observation is that most prominent articles tend to converge to a consensus over time. This is because Wikipedia has smart standards in place requiring credible sources and authorizing the deletion of agreed nonsense. It's not perfect, but the major articles on scientific and historical topics tend to be a mostly reliable starting point to learn the subject.

Conservapedia was started explicitly because they hate that consensus. Consensus without a divine authority means that The Conspiracy now controls it. It doesn't mean that there are "right" answers that can be determined through analysis; it means that the evil people who are everywhere have managed to crowd out dissent.

So on those occasions when I've read articles on Conservapedia, it hasn't surprised me at all to find that the text of the articles were a patchwork of contradictory opinions, while the comments sections were all flame wars. There's no way to resolve these flame wars, because their opinions are guided by their faith.

Here's a perfect illustration: the discussion page for Evolution.

"After much debate, the Conservapedia Panel has finished reviewing the Theory of Evolution page. We have determined that the article will remain protected indefinitely, to protect it from inevitable vandalism. We have decided that the article will not be changed in any major way. However, we agree that the article lacks an adequate, concise explanation of the Theory of Evolution."

Oh sure, the page fails to actually convey any useful information, but who gives a damn? The Panel Has Spoken. As much as they are opposed to Authority, they still love Authoritarianism, because their faith guides them to The Truth. Lower on this page, you'll find a hilarious discussion about the main picture at the top of the evolution page, which was Hitler. It's Godwin's Law invoked without a trace of irony. The "reasonable" contributions to this discussion came from those who objected that, sure, obviously evolution caused the holocaust, but wouldn't a picture of Darwin be slightly more representative?

I read their evolution page in the early days of Conservapedia, and it was obvious what was going on: There were a small minority of people who, though conservative, accepted mainstream science; they got in pissing matches with the swarms of young earthers, old earthers, and intelligent designers, all of whom also disagree with each other. Without a reliable reference to go back to, the only standard is who can be the most persistent pain in the ass about making their preferred changes stick.

So now the guy with the biggest stick, the Conservapedia Panel, decides that they should just go ahead and trump all the arguments only by declaring fiat victory -- even while they're admitting that the final product fails to even adequately explain the subject.

But you want to know something even funnier? If you go back to the front page, you'll find that Evolution was selected as their Article of the Year. That's actually the best thing they have.

This is not the Bush Administration

The White House has a blog.

With a guy who's a technology expert.

They're using it to, like, communicate stuff.

About policy.

It's been updated several times already in the few days it's been up.

And they're encouraging feedback.

Happy.

Comedy of coding errors

Nerd alert. You will probably enjoy this post if and only if you are a fellow programmer.

There's a fair amount of horrible legacy code here at my new company. It is nobody's fault -- apparently it was written by an intern at another company, then bought by my company. Which is great, because I can loudly ridicule this code without fear of offending anyone. My cubicle-mate is the senior Java developer. Together, the two of us ARE the entire Java team right now; other people here are coding a little bit of Java, but we're the experts and the commerce project is owned exclusively by us.

I ran into a beautifully horrifying bit of code today. First it gathers a list of objects from a table. Then it iterates over each object, seeing whether the object is "authorized"... and then it removes the object from the array. Not only is this inefficient to begin with -- they should have just filtered out the unauthorized objects in the original query -- but they keep rearranging the entire array every time an object is removed. Like this:

1 2 3 4 5
(object 2 is unauthorized)
1 3 4 5

Obviously this runs in O(n^2) time, when it could easily run in O(n) time just by adding a second array.

Wait, it gets worse. I'm trying to fix it, and I realize the same code that kicks out unauthorized objects appears to be in there TWICE... it's iterating over the array twice and doing approximately the same thing each time. I don't know why, but it appears to have something to do with the magic number "50" that keeps showing up in the code. As in:

for (all items) {
 if (curItem < 50) {
      do one thing
 }
}
for (all items) {
 if (curItem > 50) {
      do almost the same thing, but slightly different
 }
}

Dear God, WHY? What does 50 mean? I don't know, the code doesn't give me a clue. You would think 50 is something arbitrary like the number of items displayed per page, but no... only 12 items are displayed per page. ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH.

The bright side is that I don't think I've actually had to solve a genuine programming logic puzzle in like this for many months -- I can't remember a single example at DMi. This is fun! When I'm done, the code will run much faster. And there's probably hundreds of examples of this crummy design lurking around, waiting to be fixed.

Yay job security!

A compressed big update

"Let me esplain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up." - Inigo Montoya

There are some things I haven't aired out on this blog because I don't like to use this as a forum for complaining. But now that there's a surprising amount of good news, I'm back with some updates.

After getting my Master's in December, I got laid off not once, but twice. When my contract-to-hire came up on six months at Digital Motorworks, I was told that there was a hiring freeze. They extended my contract hoping to pick me up in December, but then the economy crashed.

I spent a bit over two months unemployed, and it was somewhat scary. I started a new job Monday, though. It's an interesting company, privately owned by one of the few hundred richest men in America. He personally works in the office, (and manages the pro baseball team that he also owns) but I haven't met him yet.

The job has its ups and downs. I'm doing Java Enterprise development, which is something I've wanted to do a lot more of. So far I really like the people I work with directly, and I've already started solving a number of problems after just two days. The work promises to be fairly exciting in a nerdy kind of way, as I may get a lot of creative control over a large commercial web application. And the pay's better than what I was making before.

On the other hand, the office is a remarkably conservative environment. It's the first place I've ever worked as a programmer where there has been a dress code -- business casual, no jeans allowed any day of the week. There's a long commute, but I was issued a fairly awesome high end company laptop on the first day and allowed to take it home. It's said that after I've worked for about a month or so, I'll get to telecommute most days. The senior developer on my team of two also lives in Austin, so we might carpool or get together locally.

Many of the other techies are fairly affable, including my boss. The building is also populated by an awful lot of ex-military guys, as the bulk of the business is about managing military supply chains. (My division is much smaller, and our software app handles commercial retail).

Also, as I obliquely mentioned in my wedding speech, Ginny and I are divorcing. It's on good terms. We had some tension for a while, but I think that situation has eased up a lot since both Ginny and I got employed. Ginny even told me she got a promotion yesterday, which is great news. Ben is handling it well, he's doing excellently in school and is coping gracefully with being in day care for the first time. He's an incredible reader. I hope I'm not overstepping my bounds if I say I think both Ginny and I now see our change as a mutually agreeable one. We've both had dates, which is a fun hobby to be taking up again, but... well, a gentlemen doesn't tell.

Actually, he does, frequently, but not on this blog. If you're one of the select circle who gets to know my private life, you've probably already heard. If not, it's none of your business. ;)

Yesterday was probably the best day I've had in months -- I'm working, it's fulfilling, I'm social. I'm hosting the TV show once a month instead of cohosting. Also, as you might imagine, I enjoy most political news these days. Al Franken appears to have won his race, although there may still be some legal squabbles. Barack Obama will be president in under two weeks. Yay!

Speech for Keryn's wedding

Mawidge!

Mawidge is a dweam wiffin a dweam!

Some of you aren't laughing, but that's okay. It's probably because you have never seen "The Princess Bride" or read the book. And if you haven't seen the movie, then you obviously didn't grow up with Keryn and me, because one of us would have strapped you down and forced you to.

You see, my relationship to Keryn, like my relationship to many members of my friends and family, is largely defined by the entertainment that we have shared. We both love musicals, and cheesy melodramas, and fantasy movies. We have seen so many of the same movies, and played so many of the same games, that now I usually just have to say one single phrase to make her break down laughing.

To give you an idea of what new friends have to go through, Keryn has a neighbor named Charity, a young woman who recently turned 18. In the few years that Keryn has known her, she's forced her to watch a variety of stuff ranging from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" to "Fraggle Rock" to the musical episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". It's part of the cultural background of knowing us, and there WILL be a test later. If I say "Imagine you're a deer..." then you'd better be prepared to sit still for several minutes while Keryn reproduces Marisa Tomei's entire screechy diatribe about animal rights from "My Cousin Vinny." The only way to cut her off is to jump to the punchline and yell it first, so she can't get more mileage out of the rest of the speech.

That's the kind of relationship I have with my little sister, and I love her very much, even though she is, like all sisters, a little nuts. Let me tell you how nuts she is. Keryn asked me to serve as the Badchan for her wedding reception. Now unlike Keryn, I am a terrible Jew, I barely even knew what a Badchan is. She told me, but I forgot. So I did what any nerd of the information age would do: I looked it up on Wikipedia, which we all know is always 100% accurate and perfectly infallible. Wikipedia says that a badchan is "a joker or clown, who traditionally entertains before and after Ashkenazic Jewish weddings." Riiiiight. At least I figured out how to PRONOUNCE Ashkenazic.

But when I heard that Keryn wanted me to present a major speech for her wedding, naturally my first reaction was, "Are you insane? You know what I'll have to say about marriage right now, don't you???" As she knows very well, I'm in the process of a divorce, and I've been living in Keryn and Michael's guest room since late July. In fact, it was kind of a running joke for me, because several couples I knew appeared to break up within a few weeks of each other. So I speculated that I am the carrier of some kind of rare virus that destroys long-term relationships. I told my theory to Keryn, and she didn't miss a beat. "GET OUT!" were her exact words.

Yet somehow, even after Keryn and Michael have been exposed to my virus every single day for five months, they're still getting married. Ask me why. Go on, ask the divorced guy how to make a successful marriage.

Well, I don't know. How well do I really know Michael? After living with the guy for several months I should know him better than anyone else in my family does, but Michael is a remarkably hard guy to get to know. I mean, here's a typical example of an exchange with Michael, when I used to come home from work and he was watching TV.

Me: "Hi Michael!"
Michael (mumbling): "Uh."

Are they together because they share the same set of values and beliefs? Um, well, you tell me. One of Keryn's many endearing features is that she's a vegan. Not a vegetarian, mind you. Vegetarians don't eat meat but they can eat eggs, milk, and sometimes even fish. Vegans don't eat or use any animal products. And Keryn, because she is against any exploitation of animals, won't eat Jell-o because it contains traces of boiled animal bones -- no really, look it up. She has to ask for details about french fries because sometimes they are cooked in the same oil as other food including meat. She won't TOUCH anyone wearing leather, and she is at least somewhat squeamish about honey. Because of the captive bees, you know.

So Michael comes home one day with a bag from Whataburger, containing... a TRIPLE cheeseburger. Now I'm an enthusiastic carnivore myself, but even I feel like going into coronary arrest just from LOOKING at that much meat in one place. Michael doesn't just want to eat this massive thing, though... he makes a point of sitting in front of my sister and going (lip smacking) "Mmmmmm, this is so good!" Keryn just loves that, I'm sure.

Actually, though, it's not true that I haven't learned anything at all about my new brother-in-law from living with him. Michael has a great sense of humor. At least I THINK he does. Quite honestly, it's often impossible to tell whether he's joking or not, because Michael's style of humor is completely deadpan. He doesn't care whether you get the joke or not. He's like Andy Kaufman: he is happy just to entertain himself. Let me show you what I mean.

I went to a Round Rock Express baseball game with my son Ben, and Keryn and Michael, and a friend of ours named Andi. Andi is a woman who just loves sports of all kinds. Takes them very seriously. Keryn and I grew up in a non-sports household, so Keryn had to ask about the rules. Yes, she didn't know the rules of BASEBALL. Even I know how baseball works. Michael explained the rules in a way that, to me, was very obviously wrong. Only he didn't do it with a smile or a wink or a sarcastic tone of voice. He just told her very directly about the role of the halfback and the center guard and whatever. Finally when he got tired of answering questions, he told her "I'll tell you more at halftime."

Later, Andi pulled me aside. She was fuming. She asked "Did you hear what he said? He'll tell her at halftime. Halftime! THERE'S NO HALFTIME IN BASEBALL!" I paused for a moment and then said "Um... Michael was joking. At least I THINK he was." But Andi insisted: "No, I heard his tone of voice. He wasn't joking. He's completely serious. He has no idea what he is talking about."

Now I thought I understood Michael's personality well enough to see through the delivery, but she actually managed to make me doubt him. So I finally had to ask him: "Hey Michael... you really were kidding when you were talking about halftime in baseball... right??" And finally Michael's facade cracked, and he grinned real wide at me. Yes, of course he was joking. But if I hadn't asked him, I think he would have been just as pleased with himself if no one got the joke.

What do Keryn and Michael see in each other? Keryn drags Michael to dance lessons, and Michael goes along with it. Michael decides to join a country club, so he can, I don't know, play golf and wear a monocle and say "I say, let's have dinner and cognac at the club tonight." Keryn goes to the club.

These are two people who like to share life experiences. Okay, fine, so they're DIFFERENT life experiences. So what? To some extent they are both very open people, who will go along and try new things just to be participating in an activity together. They scuba dive. They watch reality cooking shows. I don't think Michael really likes Renaissance Faires, but I'm betting he went along with Keryn only because she agreed to make out with another girl in costume... oh yes you did! Now the story's out!

And they both love cats. BOY do they love cats. It's a good thing that Keryn is getting married, because it prevents her from being the crazy single lady with a house full of cats. These two poor kids had to cope with the death of not one but two cats in just the last few months. I feel very sad for them, they were wonderful cats... but now they're still left with six. And you know, I was surprised when Michael was hit just as hard emotionally by the losses as Keryn was. Sometimes Michael masks his emotions so well that I didn't realize he loves his own cats so fiercely.

The truth is, I am grateful to have Michael and Keryn in my life -- not least because of their overwhelming generosity in letting me stay at their place while I am still paying mortgage on a house that I'm not currently living in. Also, as I've struggled to settle into a job that will make the best use of my Masters Degree, Michael has been a great help in giving me interviewing tips. Of course, some of his tips involve the creative use of exaggeration... which is actually a polite way of saying "He told me to lie more often." In all seriousness, Michael knows how to get and keep a job, and he really helped to change my perspective. I realize now, more than I used to, that job interviews are just as much about showmanship and presentation as they are about raw technical knowledge. I am a better person for his advice.

And while I used to think that Michael maybe didn't like kids, he's warmed up to my son Ben in some surprising ways. Part of it is the annoying way that he tells Ben to steal candy from the cabinet when I'm not looking. But Michael also recently learned some magic tricks and spent a solid chunk of time using Ben as his guinea pig audience. Ben actually bonded with Michael a little bit. Don't worry, though, I'm not very threatened by a potential hostile takeover yet.

I'll admit that there have always been periods of time when my sister drove me crazy. But also, she's sent me a lot of pictures of us two as kids together. When you look at those pictures, you would think that there was never a time when I wasn't reading to her, or she wasn't hugging me, or we weren't having a great time being in each other's company. When Keryn was born, I used to wonder whether she would ever learn to talk. When she was three, I used to wonder whether she would ever stop. But after all the things I can see we shared together -- trips to Disneyworld, and completing enormous 3D jigsaw puzzles, and skiing trips -- I guess I have to accept that we loved each other a lot, and still do.

And Michael? Well, he's not Jewish. I don't care -- did I mention that I'm a very bad Jew? Like Tevye, I'm supposed to be offended that Keryn is marrying some goy. But I'm not. I suppose it's lucky for us that we have no surviving relatives in attendance who would really care about keeping the blood pure. Besides, did you know? The name "Hawthorne" actually comes the Yiddish word "Khaw-torn-im" -- which means "people who really love reality cooking shows." So Hawthorne, Jewish. There you go.

[Side note: Keryn's pre-wedding festivities included renting a theater to watch "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," and anyone who saw that will get the reference.]

In sitcom parlance, I now have a wacky brother-in-law, and there are worse things to have. So I wish Keryn and Michael the best success in keeping their marriage alive, and I hope you have a great trip to Fiji. You lucky dogs.

Epic fail

I'm a devoted fan of fiction author Ken Follett. Something that's distinctive about Follett's writing is that his villains are very well drawn, their perspective is clearly outlined, and Follett does a good job of establishing what motivates them. So after setting up the villain as a terrible person over a period of years in the story, this perspective often helps to create a moment of great enjoyment at the end of the book, when the villain receives exactly the punishment that he fears the most, and sees all of his plans fail in the most catastrophic way possible.

I was reminded of the "epic failure" moment for a Ken Follett villain as I watched this video.



As I see it, the character of "George W. Bush" is driven by a desire to be respected and feared. We in the reality-based community have been dismissed for years as irrelevant, because while we pay attention to things like "facts," team Bush has believed themselves to be above such mundanities. They believed that the actions they took would fundamentally change the way the world works. They ridiculed the idea that we should care how the rest of the world perceives us, because they will be judged in the light of history as having made brilliant steps towards saving mankind.

The conga line of humiliation shown in the video, I think, is a neat summary of where this has gotten us. The other leaders aren't acting angry, or scared of George Bush. They're just... not interested in him. He's a lame duck in every sense of the word. They're waiting to deal with Barack Obama, to see if he's capable of dragging America out of the mess that he got us into.

Yeah, history will judge us all right... let the first few paragraphs be written now.

Song of Ice and Fire TV series proceeding

w00t! w00t! w00t!!

Excellent book series is about to become an excellent TV miniseries. This one has been in the works for a long time, of course, but this is the first confirmation that they're actually filming it now.

RIP Michael Crichton

Best-selling author Michael Crichton dies

U.S. best-selling author Michael Crichton, who wrote such novels as "The Andromeda Strain" and "Jurassic Park," and created the popular TV drama "ER," has died at 66, his family said Wednesday.

Crichton, a medical doctor turned novelist whose books have sold more than 150 million copies worldwide, died "unexpectedly" Tuesday in Los Angeles after a private battle with cancer, his family said.

I was saddened by what I saw as a slow descent into hackdom in later years, but I went through a pretty substantial Crichton phase and enjoyed the hell out of many of his books. Here are the ones I've read, with the ones I really liked marked with a star:

• A Case of Need (*)
  
• The Terminal Man
• Jurassic Park (*)
  
• Rising Sun (*)
  
• Disclosure (*)
  
• The Lost World
• Airframe
• Timeline (*)
  
• Prey (have to admit that I was put off by the awkward shift from a promising sci-fi theme to a straight-up zombie story)
  
• State of Fear (first CD of an audio set, which I stopped listening to out of boredom, long before I noticed the political message)

A successful career and a sad loss. As in the case of Orson Scott Card, I wouldn't let some weird political beliefs overshadow the many excellent works he has done.

I take full credit

Last night at 8:46, a good friend instant messaged me, saying simply, "This is almost better than sex."

Yesterday morning I spent a couple of hours logging into my.barackobama.com and making about 50 phone banked calls from home to undecided voters in Florida and Minnesota. (I've encountered another brief patch of unemployment, but I'm interviewing like crazy so don't worry too much.) Obama won big in Florida and Minnesota. You're welcome. I also persuaded a friend to do the same for New Hampshire. Obama won big in New Hampshire. You're welcome again.

I am still suffering from severe cognitive dissonance at this point... I'm simply not used to presidential election nights being FUN. Right now I should be sweating, recovering from a near all-nighter, and obsessively clicking for more news about Ohio or Florida. Reaching further back in memory, even in the Clinton elections, my enjoyment was a bit marred by being surrounded by a bunch of complaining Republicans in my college residences. Last night, instead, I was hanging out with my sister and a good friend, gleefully running back and forth between the Daily Show / Colbert electionstravaganza, and my upstairs computer (my laptop chose last night to stop responding to wireless, although it's better now) to check on messages, emails, and live updating interactive maps. Getting or making calls several times an hour.

Just a few tiny clouds in the midst of all this silver lining: Republicans still hold enough seats in Congress to effectively filibuster legislation, and you bet they will. Al Franken, who was running the most important Senate race for me personally, is a bit behind at this time, and I have no faith in recounts delivering good news. And my friends in California are mourning the passing of gay marriage. For this year, anyway.

But even in the midst of all this... what a night! What a classy concession speech! What a killer acceptance speech! God Bless Jon and Stephen, every one!

It's too bad I don't smoke.

Vote?

I already reposted something long about voting on the Atheist Experience blog, so I'll keep this one to the point.

Have you voted yet?

No?

THEN WHY ARE YOU SITTING AROUND READING BLOGS? Go vote!

Dragging some more meaning out of "Dr. Horrible"

I have the Dr. Horrible soundtrack on my iPod now, and as I listened to the music again after all these months, I realized that the story had and continues to have a meaning that really resonates with the things that have happened in my life. As I've not written on my personal blog in a few weeks (but I'm still active on atheistexperience.blogspot.com, so keep an eye on that too!) it's time to indulge my inner geek with another look back at this wacky little web movie.

This post WILL contain spoilers, but really the movie has been available for months -- what's taken you so long? Go watch it, I'll be here when you get back.


(spoiler space)











Dr. Horrible is a story about change and transition, and it is relevant to me because it was released at almost the precise moment in my own life when a period of major transition started to happen. It's still happening, and if anything the changes are accelerating. My friends will understand what life experiences I'm talking about, and I don't feel like I need to get very detailed. I'm just talking about the movie.

For a while after watching the ending, I just hated it. It made me mad, because Joss Whedon "pulled a Joss Whedon" and killed a major character as usual. In the last scene, Billy appears on camera for about three seconds looking completely lost and forlorn. And I concluded: "He's going to be miserable for the rest of his life, he'll never get over that loss."

But as I've gone and revisited it, the meaning has changed in my mind. Let's not forget that Billy's loss is Dr. Horrible's gain. The Doctor WON. He really did. He achieved his lifelong dream, acquiring fame and respect, no longer being a joke or a dork or a failure.

Just compare the very first moment of the movie - where Billy gives this pathetic and unconvincing giggle as his signature laugh - to the scene where Dr. Horrible freezes Captain Hammer and lets out a full throated villainous cackle. That was a great moment: the scared little joke of a kid has been overtaken by his inner darkness. It's darkness that he was striving to achieve, and he did it.

Far be it from me to say that it's admirable to achieve your lifelong dream of committing crimes on a vast scale and making people fear and run from you. That's totally against what I believe in, duh. But this is the Whedonverse, where values and priorities are sometimes mixed up and turned upside down, and you just have to accept them in context. Captain Hammer was a braggart and a bully, and Billy was an abused underdog who just wanted to make something of himself. That's the way it goes in this story, evil is the new good. Swallow your disbelief and move on.

Let's face it, Penny was a sweet girl -- and I would GLADLY groom Felicia Day any day of the week -- but she was absolutely wrong as a potential partner for Dr. Horrible. Not only was she sweet and caring, which are decidedly Non-Evil character traits, but she also revealed herself to be utterly shallow with her last line, when she still couldn't see through Captain Hammer's persona of coolness and realize that he was a huge dick. Sure, she looked uncomfortable during her scenes with him, but she had plenty of chances to drop the Hammer, and she still chose him in the end.

So Billy looks fleetingly unhappy in the end, and he's got some pain. So what? "Billy" is not the character he wanted to be at all. Billy wanted to be Dr. Horrible right from the start... and he got it. He won.

And is Dr. Horrible destined always to be unhappy and in pain from his inner Billy? I think not! He'll meet other girls. EVIL girls. If power could be an aphrodisiac for a gargoyle like Henry Kissinger, it's gonna work wonders for the doc, who looked totally in his element when he donned the new and improved Evil Suit. Just look at how quickly Captain Hammer's fickle groupies dumped the guy and switched to holding up a picture of Dr. H during the last song. This is not an ending that shows a guy emotionally ruined; this is the triumph of evil -- which in the upside down universe, is good.

I can't help it, I like the ending now. And "Slipping" is a great song that signifies that victory, a victory not quite complete yet, but about to become reality. It's really all about Billy's new winning attitude.

Furthermore, I suspect that my new perspective on the movie IS exactly what Joss and the other writers had in mind. After all, they were going through a major life-changing experience too. They had been poorly treated by the studios, and had taken a very risky stand which involved losing their income for several months. That's a scary thing to do, but it was done with the understanding that it was an investment to ensure that they, and those who came after them, would be better off in the long term because of the writer's strike. Change always means loss, and loss is scary, but it is hopefully a localized loss that will lead to a net gain.




In unrelated (?) news -- wish me luck on my job search. I'm a little scared myself after an impersonal layoff that I couldn't do anything about. Yet I do believe that I'm going to come out ahead, better for the experience, and it won't take very long.

Biden-Palin debate at the Alamo Drafthouse

Keryn and I watched the debate last night at the Alamo Drafthouse, an Austin movie theater chain that serves food and beer. Since, as I expected, the theater was mostly full of cheering and heckling Democrats, the evening was a fun one. There were a few scattered Republicans, and we happened to be sitting near some of the loudest -- a young couple, looked about college age, the girl was wearing a Palin shirt which my sister noticed immediately. Keryn apologized in advance for the expected rowdiness, and they said "No problem, you get used to it as a Republican in Austin." They acknowledged that everyone can yell as loud as they want without anyone's feelings being hurt.

I had pizza, Shiner Bock, and pecan pie a la mode. We also got a large bowl of popcorn, which we would have liked to throw, but there were too many people in the theater of course (it was sold out). We also received free bingo cards when we came in, with randomized spaces saying things like "Ahmadinejad," "Promise not to raise taxes," "Fannie and Freddy," "Hand chopping other hand gesture," and "Palin cries." I didn't expect that Biden would be the only one to cry, but he was.

The screen was tuned to CNN, so we got the little graph showing instant feedback about how undecided voters said they were feeling. I found it kind of mesmerizing on the giant screen, like one of those screen savers you can't stop watching. Biden got very positive results.

Anyway, there was lots of shouting and applause -- when Biden said something good most of the theater erupted, and when Palin said something quasi-Reaganesque there was a little smattering of claps. People audibly groaned every time Palin said "Nukular" or "Maverick," so there was an awful lot of groaning. At one point when global warming came up, the Republicans were shouting at Biden "That's not true! Read a science book!" and I said "There's scientific consensus that he's right in all the peer reviewed journals!" I think that was the closest I came to a brawl. The Democrat on my left started picking up on the way that Palin says "also" all the time, and starting repeating the word in the same accent every time it was said.

I managed to finish the Bingo game pretty near the end, with the square "Biden tries to tell a joke but fails badly." I didn't actually think he had done that, but Palin SAID -- I'm quoting from the transcript -- "In my comment there, it was a lame attempt at a joke and yours was a lame attempt at a joke, too, I guess, because nobody got it. Of course we know what a vice president does." I thought that was good enough to count for the bingo.

My assessment: Palin did not fall down or visibly injure herself. She parroted a lot of lines that Republicans love, including numerous ripoffs from Ronald Reagan. By virtue of this, Palin did better than expected. You can't judge how well she did based on my biased audience, but the voters being graphed on screen also seemed to favor Biden by a lot.

At the end, obviously the little reaction machines got turned off, because the line dropped all the way to the bottom of the negative scale. At least that's what it probably meant, but I also like to pretend that the audience just really hated it when Wolf Blitzer started talking.

In a few years, this woman could be president

Sarah Palin enlightens us about the financial crisis.



Ow. Ow. My ears are bleeding. Make it stop. I'm sure John Stewart is going to do a much better job with this than I am, but let me take a few stabs at it right now.

0:30:

Sarah Palin: "(Some completely nonsensical platitudes about how everything's fine.)"
Katie Couric: "(Factual information that entirely contradicts the above statement.)"
Sarah: Long pause... "Again, my understanding is that, uh, uh, (Repeats platitude with no indication that she just heard what was said)"

2:04:

Sarah: "Americans are waiting to see what John McCain will do about this. They are not waiting to see what Barack Obama will do. Because everybody knows John McCain has the track record and the leadership."
Katie (dumbfounded): "Yeah, but polls show that Obama has gotten a boost from this news, because more Americans trust him to handle this correctly."
Sarah: "Ya know, I'm not lookin' at poll numbers. I just think Americans think like me."

Yeah! We mavericks don't think about silly things like "polls!" We just SAY what the American people think, and we're always right!

Christ. It's one thing to pretend that you don't care what popular opinion says. Quite another thing to actually say that popular opinion is lying about what they really think.

5:00:

Katie: "You've said John McCain will reform the way Wall Street does business, but in 20 years he's almost always sided with people who want LESS regulation, not more."
Sarah: (gears grinding) "He's also known as 'THE maverick,' though, takin' shots from his own party. "
Katie: "I'm sorry, answer the damn question, can you give me one example of him pushing for more regulation EVER?"
Sarah: "I'll try ta find some and I'll bring 'em to ya!"

That is one tasty electoral map

This makes me happy.


In particular, Obama is winning the electoral vote handily while losing both Ohio AND Florida. (Ohio is currently neutral, but Obama wins even if it turns red.)

In 2004 I looked over the early electoral maps and concluded that Kerry could win if and only if he could carry either Ohio OR Florida. Kerry lost both, and sure enough, he lost the race. Either state flipping would have won it.

It's too early to say that things won't change, but right now, unless McCain has another ace up his sleeve, he looks pretty screwed to me.

John McCain makes Adam go "sproing"

As far as I know, not very many people are readers of Adam Cadre's regular articles.  His site is not really a proper blog, and I only know of him originally through his great work writing offbeat interactive fiction.  I am a big fan of Adam's writing.  He's blunt, atheist, liberal, and has great taste in entertainment styles, ranging from comics to games to movies to food.

So I want to wave a hand in the general direction of Adam's latest article about the presidential race.  I'll qualify this endorsement with apologies to my friends who live in red states and love them.  Hell, I love Austin, but only because it's not part of the "real" Texas, and I've long ago learned to abandon all hope when it comes to my vote personally influencing a national race.  However, quite a few things Adam says ring true for me.

Every election in my adult lifetime has played out the same way: Republicans argue that Red America is better than Blue America, and Democrats cry that, no, we're not so different! Republican political ads spew insults — or at least epithets thatRepublicans think are insults — while Democrats hold out their hands and coo that"There is no them — there is only us." I am so sick of this. There's a reason the guy who said that moved to New York after his presidency instead of back to Arkansas: New York is better than Arkansas. Massachusetts is better than Texas. Chicago is better than Wasilla, Alaska. Saying so might mean losing votes in Arkansas and Texas and Alaska, but those states are lost causes (in more ways than one); Republicans certainly show no compunction about slamming San Francisco and Boston and Vermont, and they're the ones winning elections.

...
Democrats can avoid saying that the red states are inferior to the blue ones as much as they like. But the red staters will continue to hear it. They'll hear it because the voices inside their heads are saying it. And those voices are correct. This makes them angry, and they lash out. Ten years ago, I was floored when a direly unfunny SNL alum named Adam Sandler suddenly scored a massive hit with a movie called The Waterboy, in which he played a mouth-breathing loser who becomes a star linebacker, fueled by uncontrollable rage at the thought of people making fun of him. At the time I couldn't understand why anyone would watch that, but now I get it. It spoke to people. After all, it's what vast numbers of American voters do at the ballot box.

...
What kind of people do places like Wasilla grow? Well, for one thing, it's hard to get off to a good start in life when your drunken stepfather is tasing you, bro. Child abuse happens everywhere, but some cultures foster it more than others. When parents exert total hegemony over the household without any kind of societal check, it opens up the potential for a real horror show — as the Palin family has demonstrated. Barack Obama tried to provide that societal check in Illinois with a program to teach schoolchildren how to avoid sexual abuse — and a McCain/Palin ad this week actually slams him for it. But given that an Anchorage judge ruled in 2005 that Sarah Palin herself was guilty of child abuse, I suppose it's not so surprising that she and her ilk are so afraid of daylight: it makes it that much harder for "our small towns" to keep their ugly little secrets.

Much more... please read.

Google makes yet another bid to run your life

So Google is now competing with Explorer and Firefox with their newest application, Chrome.  And I said, "Sure, just go ahead and take control of more of my online information and habits."  I mean, besides being my search engine, they already own this blog, my email, and a lot of my documents; keep track of my feed reading habits and my addresses, and maintain some of the code I've written; as well as being providing a desktop search application and a fun geographical visualization toy.  Did I leave anything out?

I can't say I'm not worried about them either turning evil or just disappearing someday.  But damn it, I can't help myself... I really LIKE having all the stuff I need online where I can access it from home, work, and any other computer in the world.  I suppose if Google does become an evil power, this is probably what it will look like.  It wouldn't be the first time that "The Onion" printed something that turned out to predict reality.

In the meantime... yes, I'm typing this from Google Chrome.  I am weak.  It doesn't even support any plugins, and yet for the moment I'm willing to use it even without themes, mouse gestures, ad blockers, or even getting my bookmarks updated automatically by del.icio.us.

A few points in Chrome's favor so far:

1. It starts up VERY FAST compared to the other browsers... although this might have something to do with the lack of plugins.
2. It has a very compact interface, and does a lot of creative things to keep the screen space clean, like sticking the "search page" bar in one place.
3. As you're typing an address, it automatically searches for likely completions and shows you the name of the page where you'd wind up.  (To be fair, Firefox 3 also appears to do something like this.)
4. Searches and URLs are entered in the same box.  Usually it makes the correct choice, but you can pick from a menu to clarify what you want.
5. When you open a tab, it shows you your favorite web destinations, along with thumbnail images of what they look like right now.
6. You can drag tabs outside the window to create a new window, or drag a tab from one window to another.

All pretty cool.  Firefox (my primary browser) might imitate some of the new hotness, but for now I'm keeping Chrome Beta as my default browser, and I'll look forward to seeing what they release in the next few patches.

More on Sarah Palin

I got a bewildering comment from a Republican, on the last post about Sarah Palin. First thing he said was: "Well layed out. Even more Hillary supporters will go for McCain now."

The reason it's bewildering is because, while he's entitled to his opinion, it has no apparent bearing to what I actually said in the post. So the question is, was Sarah Palin a good pick to woo former Clintonites?

Probably not...

Among Democratic women — including those who may be disappointed that New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton did not win the Democratic nomination — 9% say Palin makes them more likely to support McCain, 15% less likely.

Republicans pray for rain... and get it

Mmmm... I love the smell of irony in the morning.



Two weeks ago, some smug, smirking representative of Focus on the Family smarmily asked in a YouTube video, "Would it be wrong to ask people to pray for rain? Not just rain, abundant rain, torrential rain" -- in order to ruin Barack Obama's speech at Mile High Stadium last Friday. Just to give the world a demonstration about how mad God is about gay marriage, you see.

Careful what you wish for.

It ALMOST makes me wish I believed in their God. :P