WWdN: In Exile

privacy is a fundamental human right

Bruce Schneier writes another thoughtful and insightful essay on privacy:

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.

[...]

[I]f we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.

[...]

How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered.

This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives.

I reject the notion that we have to choose between privacy and security, and I agree with the oft-repeated quote about the foolishness of sacrificing the former in pursuit of the latter.

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We deserve privacy, and we don't have to give it up to have security. They work very well together. Encoding messages for my friends and family is fun, but I sure don't want to feel like I have to do it all the time, just because I can't trust my government - and, increasingly, my neighbors - to leave me alone.

i'm leaning towards . . .

(via reddit)

EPIC FAIL

wil's tuesday link-o-rama

As part of my continuing plot to convince you all to read my Propeller submissions, I present a few of my favorite stories from the last couple of days:

The dying art of the knuckleball

In the Red Sox clubhouse a few hours before the start of a drizzly, early-May game against the Rays, Tim Wakefield wraps his hand around a brand-new baseball and models his knuckleball grip. On television, Wakefield's grip appears claw-like and uncomfortable, but up close, it looks effortless...

Okay, first of all, when did the Devil Rays become the Rays? Did it happen because some crazy fundies got all worked up? I'm laying 3:2 that they did.

My enthusiasm for baseball -- actually, in all professional sports that aren't hockey or soccer -- has cratered in the last couple of years, but I still love to watch a knuckleballer confound a batter. It's a dying art , like pitchers who can last more than 5 innings.

Librarian carrying "McCain=Bush" sign kicked out of McCain event

In McCain's *open to the public* townhall meeting, a 61 year-old woman was cited for trespassing on orders from the McCain security detail for carrying a sign that read "McCain=Bush." Carol Kreck received a ticket and her court date is set for July 23.

That the event this woman was removed from was a public event, and she didn't do anything more disruptive than hold up a sign. "All I did was carry a sign that said McCain = Bush," Kreck said. "And for everyone who voted for Bush, I don't see why it's offensive to say McCain = Bush." Well, McCain is running for Bush's third term.

Book review: It's All Too Much

It's All Too Much is a terrific book that inverts the typical approach to dealing with existential kipple. Rather than helping you find new places and novel ways to "organize" all your crap, author Peter Walsh encourages you to explore why you ever kept all that junk in the first place.

Some friends of ours have my dream house: it's got beautiful hardwood floors, it's uncluttered, and they can park both of their cars in their garage. My whole life, I've had a problem with holding onto things (real and imagined) so this book looked super interesting to me, not because I need it (I know that I just need to get rid of my shit) but because it tells me that I'm not the only one with this problem.

HOWTO: build anti-paparazzi sunglasses

Hackaday posts plans to build some simple but effective anti-paparazzi sunglasses. They work by mounting two small infrared lights on the front. The wearer is completely inconspicuous to the human eye, but cameras only see a big white blur where your face should be.

I had to deal with paparazzi in that "really fucks with your ability to live your life" way for about two months when I was a teenager. I quickly figured out that if I avoided certain places and certain people, I could also avoid the cameras. But this project is interesting to me because we live in a world where our fucktard leaders are increasingly shoving their faces into every aspect of our personal and private lives, so any effort to say NOT YOURS is pretty important to me.

Bacon mania!

Why are Americans so batty for bacon? It's delicious, it's decadent -- and it's also a fashion statement.

I'm a vegetarian, so bacon as food is irrelevant to me. However, bacon as a cultural phenomenon? That's something else entirely. Something crispy and delicious!

The History of the Chaos Computer Club

With causes like ensuring secure voting machines, protecting privacy, defeating censorship and governmental obfuscation, and promoting hacker ethics, the CCC has become something of a hacktivist powerhouse. They hold an annual "Chaos Communications Congress" gathering and also a very cool hacker camp every four years.

If you're intrigued by this article, I highly recommend reading The Hacker Crackdown, The Cuckoo's Egg, and Cyberpunk (which has nothing to do with actual Cyberpunk).

Book Review: Dungeons and Desktops

Dungeons and Desktops chronicles the rise and fall of the Computer RPG industry, from Akalabeth to Zelda. While the bulk of the book is devoted to the genre's 'Golden Age' in the late '80s and early '90s, author Matt Barton explores the entire history of CRPGs, from their origins in the mid '70s to the very recent past.

I've written a lot of articles about video games, and my love of classic gaming is well known. But I don't know if I've ever pointed out just how much I love computer RPGS. From the Infocom games of my childhood to early Mac games like Uninvited and DejaVu to Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment, to Bioshock, the RPGS are my absolute favorites. This book seems really, really awesome. (And really, really expensive, unfortunately.)

i think the planet is trying to tell us something . . .

North Pole ice 'may disappear by September'

Arctic sea ice is now retreating so quickly that scientists say there is now a 50-50 chance that it will have gone completely by September.

[...]

The Arctic is seen as an important indicator of the potentially catastrophic changes that scientists say will come as the planet warms.

Honeybee collapse claims record number of hives this year

A record 36 percent of U.S. commercial bee colonies have been lost to mysterious causes so far this year and worse may be yet to come, experts told a congressional panel Thursday.

The year's bee colony losses are about twice the usual seen following a typical winter, scientists warn. Despite ambitious new research efforts, the causes remain a mystery.

Um. I like this planet. It's really beautiful, and it's currently the only one I can live on. Could we maybe work together as a species to stop shit like this from happening?

windows open and raining in

I came across some really interesting items while Propelling today, which I wanted to share, because I can:

Farmers Put 220 Acres Under Glass to Create Vast Artificial Environment

On the chilly Isle of Thanet in Kent, England, farmers are placing 220 acres of land under glass so they can grow vegetables all year round. The greenhouse, when completed, will house 1.3 million plants and increase the UK's crop of green vegetables by 15%. Called Thanet Earth, the project will be a series of 7 connected grenhouses with a relatively small carbon footprint. And nothing grown inside Thanet Earth will ever touch soil.

This interests me a great deal because I'm considering some hydroponic gardening in addition to my regular gardening here, as we attempt to reduce our carbon footprint and become more self-sufficient. Climate change played an important part in the worldbuilding of the novella I'm working on, so I've spent a lot of time researching the future of agriculture; it's interesting to me to see people experimenting with different techniques in the present.

A Professional Gambler's Take on the Tim Donaghy Scandal

Haralabos Voulgaris leads a rare life.

He's one of very few people -- Voulgaris estimates there may be as few as four or five -- who have achieved a high level of success betting full-time on the NBA.

And he does very well at it. "In the last eight years," he explains, "the 2004-2005 season was the only year where I didn't turn a nice profit, and I lost very small."

His approach is intensively evidence-based. He has his own massive database that would be the envy of any stat geek. For instance: Given two line-ups of players on the floor, his database does, he says, a good job of predicting which players will guard each other. The database also tracks the tendencies of individual referees, and factors all that and much more into forecasts. Voulgaris also watches close to 1,000 games a year.

He designed the database as a tool to outwit oddsmakers, and it works for that.

But it's also a fine-tuned machine for researching the claims and career of Tim Donaghy. And having used this database, and his contacts in the sports betting world, Voulgaris says that his confidence in the integrity of the NBA has been shaken, to the point that, despite his big income, he's looking for ways to stop betting altogether.

"The league has made a big mistake," he says.

I sort of knew Haralabos back in my poker-playing days, and really liked him because he was one of the first players who was really kind to me, even though he had no reason to be. I knew he bet on sports, but I had no idea he was as serious as he appears to be. His perspective on this whole scandal was fascinating to me, especially how his data and analysis support Donaghy's claims. He says the NBA has done a great job of sweeping the whole thing under the rug. Unfortunately, I agree with him.

The Watchmen Motion Comic

Warner Bros. plans on releasing about a dozen 22 to 26 minute webisodes to help make the complex story of Watchmen easier for the uninitiated to digest. Recently, WatchmenComicMovie was shown a teaser trailer for these webisodes by an anonymous source. From what we saw these webisodes are going to be really well done.

The series of webisodes, which will be titled Watchmen: A Digital Graphic Novel, will be less like a slide show of original comic panels and more of the comic book “brought to life” with rudimentary animation techniques.

The teaser is simply a conglomeration of different scenes from the comic book given motion and set to dramatic orchestral music. In order to animate the comic, the production team has apparently dissected the elements from each panel that they wanted to move — such as a cloud or a character — and animated it in front of a restored or “filled in” background.

For example — they animated the iconic comic panel that shows The Comedian’s funeral from above to not only have falling rain and lightning, but wind that realistically blows the coats and clothing of the mourners surrounding the open grave. In another, Ozymandias sits in front of his monitor bank — each commercial and T.V. program on the screens in motion — scratching the back of his pet Bubastis’ head. For lack of a better way to describe the trailer, it’s like you’re watching an episode of Watchmen: The Animated Series.

DUDE! Even though living in a post-Phantom Menace world has made my default position on all these thing "apprehensively optimistic" I can't wait to watch these. It seems like everyone involved in Watchmen truly gets it, so it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep my hopes nice and low . . . they want to go up and up and up.

This last story isn't my submission, but that's just because my fellow scout Keith beat me to it:

The Prisoner remake: details emerge?

The Prisoner Appreciation Society (Six of One) is reporting that this classic, surreal sci-fi/adventure series is set to return for a six-episode miniseries run. The announcement coincides with The Prisoner's 40th anniversary.

Reports have Jim Caviezel playing the heroic Number Six -- actor with a penchant for playing long-suffering characters (Bobby Jones, Jesus). Sir Ian McKellen would play arch-nemesis Number Two, while cementing his status alongside Christopher Lee as the greatest nerd project actors of their generation. Between the two of them, they'd own Star Wars, James Bond, Lord of the Rings, Dracula, Frankenstein and X-Men).

The Prisoner is my all-time favorite TV show, ever. EVER! After watching marathon after marathon of The Prisoner, I grokked what makes people become Trekkies or Browncoats. It did more than entertain me, it inspired me. I know that's weird to say about something that's so Orwellian, but it's true. The Prisoner spoke to me when I was a teenager. I bought the GURPS book, bought all the video tapes, and picked up every fan-made book and map of The Village I could find. I bought rub-on transfer letters in the Albertus font so I could make my own signs for my dressing room, and I painstakingly drew my own Number Six badge to wear on my jackets. I read and re-read the graphic Novel Shattered Visage fruitlessly looking for clues about . . . stuff. My first big external SCSI Mac II hard disk, which I think weighed in at a mighty 30 Megabytes, was named KAR120C. Again, living in a post-Phantom Menace world makes me a little nervous, and we've been talking about this remake almost as long as we were talking about a Watchmen movie, so I don't even know if this is as reliable as it seems. Regardless, I'm hopeful that there's someone out there who can treat it right. And a six episode mini-series would be freaking brilliant.

Okay, one last bonus link before I go: years ago, I did an episode of The Outer Limits called The Light Brigade. I was watching The Time Tunnel last night on Hulu, and saw that The Light Brigade is there, as well. It's useless for non-US visitors (can you use a proxy to fool Hulu? I haven't tried) but if you're in the US and want to spend 44 minutes watching me . . . um . . . act, I guess is the word I'm looking for . . . now you can.

i'm just sayin'

hillary clinton: the psycho ex-girlfriend of the democratic party

As many of you know, I'm an enthusiastic Barack Obama supporter. I have never been so excited or inspired by a candidate -- or, really, any leader -- in my life, and I view this election as an historical opportunity -- maybe even a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity -- to not only save my country from the disaster wrought by Bush and Cheney, but fundamentally change how my government interacts with the rest of the world, and how it works for me and my fellow Americans.

Knowing all of that, I'm sure it will come as no surprise that over the last 10 weeks or so, I've gone from respecting to feeling sorry for to actively despising Hillary Clinton.

It's over. She knows it's over. It's been over for almost three months, but she's been moving the goalposts and cynically and cravenly pandering to voters in a way that's not only insulting, but is embarrassing. John Cole frequently says that he can't believe he ever supported Bush, and I can now join him in saying that I can't believe I ever supported, defended and believed in the Clintons.

The thing about all of this is that, with a Clinton victory in the primary about as likely as jumping off the roof of your house and landing on the moon, it's become clear that this whole thing isn't about Democrats or beating McCain (who is inexplicably running for Bush's third term) or saving our country from the catastrophic failure of the Bush years. No, it's all about her. It's about her ego. It's about refusing to admit that she did her best, but voters (except those encouraged by Rush Limbaugh to cross party lines and fuck with our primary) have pretty clearly said "No thanks. You're a good senator, but we want something different now."

It's been crystal clear for weeks, yet she refuses to put party and country over personal ambition and drop out of the race, forcing Barack Obama to not only run against McCain and the Media, but also against her. It's particularly galling, because she can only win if her campaign can force Democratic superdelegates (one of the worst creations in the history of politics) to tell millions of Democratic voters -- many of them first time voters who, like me, finally feel truly inspired by someone -- to go fuck themselves.

It's driving me crazy, and I hope that someone sits her down with a calculator so she'll make this primary that is just strengthening McCain -- who, I feel obligated to point out again, is running for Bush's third term. That would be George W. Bush, the most universally hated president in American history.

At times like these, when it would be easy to despair, I find comfort in humor, like this post I saw on Reddit this morning: Hillary Clinton: The Psycho Ex-Girlfriend of the Democratic Party.

It's 2:31 AM. The Democratic Party is sleeping peacefully when it hears its phone buzz on the night stand. It rolls over and sees "Hillary" on the caller ID. It pauses briefly, considering pushing "END" and not dealing with this shit tonight. The thought is appealing but the Democratic Party knows that if it doesn't take this call, another one is only minutes away.

DEMS: ...Hello?

Hillary: Hey baby.

DEMS: C'mon Hillary. Enough with this.

Hillary: Don't you get it? You NEED me.

DEMS: No, I don't. It was fun while it lasted but I'm with Barack now. I made my choice, it's done.

Hillary: You can't really mean that. How can you say that after all the good times we had?

DEMS: To be honest, I started hanging out with you because Bill's pretty awesome.

Hillary: But I'm just like Bill!

DEMS: No, you're not. Bill is charismatic, inspiring, and gets me really good weed.

Hillary: Fuck you. You're elitist!

DEMS: I'm going back to sleep.

I hope that, after the crushing defeat in North Carolina and few thousand vote "victory" in Indiana, the undeclared superdelegates (again, the absolute worst idea in the history of politics) will respect the will of the people and commit to Obama, so we can all focus on introducing the real John McCain -- not a Maverick, not a nice guy, not an honest guy, not a regular guy, not substantially different from George W. Bush in any meaningful way -- to the American people.

And allow me to just head something off right now that's already come up on Twitter: I'm not sexist. This isn't sexist. That's a stupid straw man, and if you try to make that claim, I will point and laugh at you.

Update: Here, let me try this one more time for the humorless and professional victims out there, who seem to have shown up in a flood today: Gender, race, sexual orientation, things that make us different that we don't choose . . . they just don't matter to me. At all. People are people and identity politics is stupid.

I found this post hilarious because it satirized the behavior of an ex-girlfriend/ex-boyfriend/ex-robot who just refuses to accept that it's over. I've had a psycho ex-girlfriend. My friends who are women have had psycho ex-boyfriends. In all cases, the behavior has been exactly like the behavior satirized in the post I linked. Get it? Get it? I'm talking to you now, people without a sense of humor: It. Is. Not. About. The. Gender. It. Is. About. The. Behavior. The Behavior. The Behavior.

Everyone get it now? Am I spelling it out simply enough for you? Let's all say it together. Use a puppet if it helps: It's about the behavior. It is not about the gender.

That's the whole point, that's the humor, that's what inspired me to link this post. If you're unwilling or unable to understand this . . . well, anything I'd say now would waste even more of my time, so I'll go back to pointing and laughing.

Final update:

Well, I'm just going to throw up my hands here. I've made it as abundantly clear as I possibly can that I don't care about Clinton's gender, and I don't have a problem with women. What I *do* care about
is watching a woman I once respected degenerate into a Republicanesque Karl Rove monstrosity in a Quixotic effort to destroy a candidate I believe in. What I care about is beating John McCain in November so we can start to put our country back together.

If you want to boycott me, go nuts. As a life-long activist, I understand and totally support the concept of voting with your pocketbook and voting with your feet.

But stop telling me who I am and what I think and feel. I know what I was thinking when I wrote this, and it's not what many of you have accused me of.

I'm not going to waste any more time on this, and I'm locking comments on this post. May I suggest that you take whatever energy you'd use to tell me what a terrible person I am and use it to put some good into the world instead.

Writing to your congresscritter and demanding an end to the war would probably be a good place to start.

I voted today

I cast my vote for Barack Obama in California's primary this morning.

Here's a major reason why I did:

“When I am this party's nominee, my opponent will not be able to say that I voted for the war in Iraq; or that I gave George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran; or that I supported Bush-Cheney policies of not talking to leaders that we don't like. And he will not be able to say that I wavered on something as fundamental as whether or not it is ok for America to torture — because it is never ok… I will end the war in Iraq… I will close Guantanamo. I will restore habeas corpus. I will finish the fight against Al Qaeda. And I will lead the world to combat the common threats of the 21st century: nuclear weapons and terrorism; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease. And I will send once more a message to those yearning faces beyond our shores that says, "You matter to us. Your future is our future. And our moment is now.”

Patrick Nielsen Hayden, (via John Scalzi,) put my feelings into words, so I'm going to borrow them, rather than struggle to come up with my own:

I’m for Obama knowing perfectly well that, as Bill Clinton suggested, it’s a “roll of the dice”. A roll of the dice for Democrats, for progressives, for those of us who’ve fought so hard against the right-wing frames that Obama sometimes (sometimes craftily, sometimes naively) deploys. Because I think a Hillary Clinton candidacy will be another game of inches, yielding—at best—another four or eight years of knifework in the dark. Because I think an Obama candidacy might actually shake up the whole gameboard, energize good people, create room and space for real change.

Because he seems to know something extraordinarily important, something so frequently missing from progressive politics in this country, in this time: how to hearten people. Because when I watch him speak, I see fearful people becoming brave.

We've been afraid for too long, and it's cost us dearly. Karl Rove and George Bush and Dick Cheney will have many disastrous legacies, but one of the most despicable and enduring will be how they used fear to deeply and deliberately divide our country.

It's going to be a huge challenge for our next president to heal this nation, and end the Culture of Fear that's been created by the Bush Administration. I believe that Barack Obama is the best candidate to do that, and I was proud to vote for him today.

It felt so good to cast a vote that I was proud of, in support of someone, instead of resigning myself to voting for the lesser of two evils.

not that my endorsement means much of anything, but . . .