Month: November 2005

on the longevity of rock bands

Listening to one of these DJ-less stations that are catching on these days, I heard Action by Sweet. Don’t remember hearing it back in their heyday, but I looked it on iTMS and read the bio details they offer. I was struck by the fact their career spanned 1970 to 1982, while Depeche Mode, who are playing here this week, have been around for 25 years. Likewise U2.

Is this a good thing? Discuss.
As a side item, I think any band that loses a founding member, after they have achieved a certain level of recognition, must change their name. (I’m looking at you, R.E.M.) They’re no longer the same group (for example, how do the Brian Jones-era Stones differ from the Mick Taylor-era and the Ron Wood-era?).

the missing factor in global warming?

This is a pretty shrill piece, suggesting that oil and gas extraction activities might have triggered the massive earthquake/tsunami combination in late 2004. What struck me was this passage. Living in Atlanta for 15 years[1], watching the traffic get worse and the weather get nastier, I wondered myself if miles of idling cars on blacktop for several hours a day (rush “hour” was from 6-9 AM and 4-7 PM) was driving those changes[2].

Indonesian Tsunami Probably Tripped by Exxon-Mobil Works:

Another obvious fact that is never quoted in relation to global warming is that internal combustion engines do not just give off greenhouse gases, they also give off tremendous heat – every single one of them. If you try putting your hand near the cooling-radiator or exhaust manifold of a running engine, you are going to snatch it away again quickly to prevent burns. The professors never factor this into the global-warming equations, and never mention it in the news. They mention only the gas emissions.

Think about the millions of engines giving off tremendous heat every day, some all day every day. Compound this on top of the greenhouse gases and you can see why the scientists’ and professors’ prognostications have turned out to be wrong. The ice caps are melting much faster than the “experts” first predicted, and faster than they are still wrongly predicting now.

1. Atlanta Heat Island 1972 – 1993: images
2. Atlanta’s heat island: article

shades of meaning

A little Anglo-specific: I don’t know enough about some of the current events/affairs to be sure I picked the right response.

Handholder

You go out of your way to build bridges with people of different views and beliefs and have quite a few religious friends. You believe in the essential goodness of people , which means you’re always looking for common ground even if that entails compromises. You would defend Salman Rushdie’s right to criticise Islam but you’re sorry he attacked it so viciously, just as you feel uncomfortable with some of the more outspoken and unkind views of religion in the pages of this magazine.


You prefer the inclusive approach of writers like Zadie Smith or the radical Christian values of Edward Said. Don’t fall into the same trap as super–naïve Lib Dem MP Jenny Tonge who declared it was okay for clerics like Yusuf al–Qaradawi to justify their monstrous prejudices as a legitimate interpretation of the Koran: a perfect example of how the will to understand can mean the sacrifice of fundamental principles. Sometimes, you just have to hold out for what you know is right even if it hurts someone’s feelings.
What kind of humanist are you? Click here to find out.

living vicariously

The Deep North » Blog Archive » Moments of Optimism:

We have just spent a strenuous afternoon engaged in one of those seasonal middleaged sort of things, viz. planting bulbs. This always takes the same course; a huge box arrives from Peter Nyssen and we stare into it appalled; there is a hundred of this, two hundred of that. It is the busiest time of year; how the hell are we going to find time to get these little bastards underground? Well, it has been a nice sunny day. Laying aside 5 lectures, somebody’s PhD, a 700-page book for review, a malfunctioning Hoover, the inkle loom, this year’s Christmas book and a batch of bread dough (to mention only the things on my jobsheet for the weekend), the Northern Professor and I stormed out and got planting. We did this with considerable efficiency: 135 tulips, 100 iris reticulata, 30 dark pink lilies, 30 hyacinths and 100 muscari now adorn the beds in front of the house, and I have planted two huge pots of lilies and one of allium schubertii. There is more to go, but that was the biggest job. With a place this size, you need to plant bulbs by the hundred or not at all. And the other thing is, as it goes on , you feel more and more cheerful. Eventually, it will be spring. And when it finally arrives, it will be greeted by hundreds of flowers. The skies will not be steel-grey, soggy and dark for ever.

The skies are just like that here today, overflowing with drippiness, and not very inviting. But I can relate to the idea of setting out the bulbs now in hopes of a glorious spring. I never take mine in, given our mild climate and the low risk of a hard freeze, but that’s not excuse not to dig some more in when I get a chance. Have to remember what’s already out there and where, before I order any.

how to script the forwarding of spoof/phishing emails?

I get a few phishing spams a day, almost always from PayPal and eBay. I make it a point to send them to to the spoof@ address for each service, but I would like to be able to automate the process of viewing the message as raw text, forwarding it to spoof@, and then sending them on.

I looked at Automator and AppleScript but neither seems to have the mojo necessary to change the view of the message so I can forward on the revealing bits.

Anyone cracked this particular nut?

[update] attached is a compiled .scpt file of an example that appears in comments, contributed by Mark Reed.

phishing.scpt

If it doesn’t download cleanly, just copy and paste from the comments, then search and replace curly quotes with the other kind.