Tuesday, 27 February, 2007. 11:00:41 PMA Debian upgrade broke xv by removing the libpng2 libraries. I downloaded
the xv source code and all patches and compiled it for Linux. I'm going
to keep the source around and build xv from it whenever required because
patching xv is a pain.
Tuesday, 27 February, 2007. 10:22:06 PMI just ordered a BIOSTAR V6202EL13 GeForce 6200 LE 128MB GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Low Profile Video Card for my desktop computer. The current card is an old
GeForce 2 MX400 PCI card. It works well for me now, but I'm planning an upgrade
to a 22 inch wide LCD. I don't need any additional speed, but the new card
has a DVI connector and the capability for higher resolutions than my old
card. There is no fan on the new card.
Tuesday, 27 February, 2007. 03:25:48 PMMy Bose headphones just broke. The plastic rotating connection between the
headband and the earpiece broke, because it was obviously weak junk. The
headphones sound really good, but mechanically they're garbage.
Tuesday, 27 February, 2007. 03:24:27 PMWe had a fire by my house on Saturday. It was a brush fire two ridges over
from where I live and the smoke was blowing through the canyon. After
about an hour the fire department had it under control.
Tuesday, 20 February, 2007. 03:35:00 PMThe
Asian Giant Hornet is eaten by some people in Japan.
Saturday, 10 February, 2007. 12:41:51 PMI picked up a 550 watt silent power supply from the Tiger Direct
retail store in Naperville and installed it when I got back home
to Austin last night. Everything works perfectly on the new motherboard,
except for the network. That's not a problem, because I have a PCI network
card. I'm going to keep the ECS board I got from Fry's and send the
Foxconn board back to New Egg.
Friday, 09 February, 2007. 05:24:39 PMAnna Nicole Smith is dead. The nation mourns her sacrifice, and
celebrates her life. The beautiful supermodel rose from humble
beginnings in small-town Texas to pursue her dream of stardom.
After heeding her nation's call, she served with Marine forces
in Baghdad, and tragically was shot through the tits while on
patrol near the Green Zone.
I'm so happy that finally our news media is focusing on the sacrifices
that our young people are making. For the war, or against the war,
good people are dying and almost nobody is noticing.
Thursday, 08 February, 2007. 11:10:53 PMThe oldest veteran of the First World War died today. Antonio Pierro was
110 years old, an American citizen born in Italy, and the oldest living
man in the world. As of today, there are only 39 remaining veterans of
the War to End All Wars.
Thursday, 08 February, 2007. 06:20:45 PMAbout.com has a nice article on
common responses to the bigotry displayed by the guests on Paula
Zahn's CNN show.
Thursday, 08 February, 2007. 04:16:34 PMThe final chapter of the sad Karen Hunter saga finds her devolved into
insanity unbefitting a Pulitzer Prize winner. Her incoherence is
illustrated in her final e-mail to me, reproduced below:
Envelope-to: pdrap@pdrap.org
Delivery-date: Thu, 08 Feb 2007 15:06:48 -0600
To: pdrap@pdrap.org
Subject: Re: Your CNN appearance
X-MB-Message-Source: WebUI
From: khuntercolumn@aol.com
X-MB-Message-Type: User
X-AOL-IP: 64.12.168.83
X-Spam-Flag: NO
X-SpamProbe: GOOD 0.0000151 c52c02a248bd6cf01b834a3e2037ebf6
What's uppppppppppp!
She's not funny, not even a little bit. That's a woman who tells
atheists to "just shut up" on national television, and when an ordinary
person writes to complain, she doesn't take it seriously. That's pure
arrogance, and ignorance. Karen Hunter is a great example of how people
who irrationally hate people for their gender, race, or creed, are just
too unthinking and insensitive to realize how wrong they are. She's
literally too self-absorbed to be ashamed of herself.
Thursday, 08 February, 2007. 03:02:08 PMPulitzer Prize winner Karen Hunter continues her amazing intellectual
exchange with me. Her latest e-mail to me simply says "I know you are,
but what am I?" This amazing invective was preceded by her accusation
that I was, in her words, "childish."
Thursday, 08 February, 2007. 02:13:21 PMRichard Dawkins is going to be on Paula Zahn's show tonight at 7 PM central.
Thursday, 08 February, 2007. 02:00:12 PMKaren Hunter wrote back again to say that I don't get an answer because
I started out with calling names. I really don't get why she is acting
as if I slighted her, when she's the one who got on CNN to tell all
atheists to shut up, and to say that maybe what we need is our own
Hallmark cards.
Of course I sent some words back her way. I wonder if she realizes how
bad she looks, since she's a Pulitzer winner.
One of the other guests on the show, Debbie Schlussel, is also embarassing
herself.
Her article is entitled "When Atheists a/k/a Future Muslims Attack"
I don't mind receiving the atheist hate mail, since I know that in a few years, many of these same people will either be Muslim extremists (redundant) or helping the country fall further in its fight against the creep of Islamic imposition on America . . . or both.
Look at famous atheists and what happened to them. Adam Gadahn a/k/a Azzam Al-Amriki--now a top Al-Qaeda video "personality"--was raised by his hippie Jewish father and equally bizarre gentile mother as an atheist. And look how he turned out. Ditto for hippie-spawn John Walker Lindh.
Those two people are enemies of America, and many of those who think like them are of equally weak mind. If you don't believe in anything, you'll easily fall for virtual nothings. That's why Europe is so quickly turning Islamist--because atheism dominates and Christianity is rapidly dying there. Over there, the number one cause for which atheists are suddenly finding "god" is Islam.
Thursday, 08 February, 2007. 12:31:42 PMWe're still going:
--------------
> weasel? believe what you want. Question: How many others responded to
> you?
My questions remain unanswered. What is it that you indicated
you thought of me? You know what I think of you. Are you afraid
of something? Did you write rashly, without actual conviction?
I do want an answer to my question: what is it that you think I
am?
Just so you know, I wrote to CNN expressing my displeasure
at the lack of an atheist on the show. They have not responded,
nor do I expect them to. You are the only other person who I
wrote to, because your words were the most offensive and
intolerant. The gentleman on the show was by contrast a thoughtful
and tolerant person, and I was not offended by anything he said.
Finally "weasel" is the correct term. It wasn't a matter of interpretation,
or of judging small snippets. You said repeatedly that atheists
had better shut up. I asked you (and hinted) that a way out
was that you had spoken too broadly, that it was just certain
atheists which you meant to shut up. You're avoiding the
subject, and acting as if I'm the one that offended you. If
you're offended, you deserve to be.
Wednesday, 07 February, 2007. 07:03:22 PMMs. Karen Hunter and I are still writing each other. She's
very testy about all this, which is odd, since she is the one
that is going on television saying whole groups of Americans
should just shut up. I asked her why she hates me, as I'm
part of the group she wants to shut up.
On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 06:51:47PM -0500, khuntercolumn@aol.com wrote:
> I don't hate you...why would you say such a thing. That's ridiculous. I
> don't even know you.
>
> What I think is unwise is to judge someone based on sound bites. The
> format is not conducive to a discussion. That wasn't the point. Did you
> question why CNN didn't have an atheist on the panel?
The lack of an atheist on the panel was the first thing I wondered
and wrote to CNN about. You are not responsible for that though, so I
restricted myself to your own comments on the show.
Whatever you may say now to weasel out of your own words, it is
a recorded fact that you insisted that atheists just shut up. I've
watched the entire CNN interview a few times, and you repeated
your statements about what atheists should do. It's not a sound
bite I'm responding to, it's prolonged and repeated hate speech
that's gotten me riled up. When someone says that whole groups
of Americans have a lesser right to speak up because of who they
are, it's disgusting to me.
Also, I'm still wondering exactly what it is that you think I am.
I was clear about what I think you are. I think you're a bigot,
because of your intolerance of me and my beliefs. You've judged
me without knowing me. You've included me in a class of people
which you believe should just "shut up", yet before I objected
my name was unknown to you. We wouldn't even be furiously typing
at each other otherwise.
So, Ms. Hunter, I am not ashamed to say what I think of you. But
you on the other hand seem to be avoiding a clarification of just
what you think I am.
Wednesday, 07 February, 2007. 05:44:49 PMThis is what Ms. Hunter wrote back to me. She seems a little snippy to me:
Okay. Thanks for the warning. Much appreciated.
You are letting me know what I am? Wow. I appreciate that, too. And now
I know what you are, too.
Wednesday, 07 February, 2007. 05:15:05 PMThis is what I wrote to Ms. Hunter, the person in the CNN show who kept
saying that atheists ought to just shut up:
I just wanted to let you know that I don't appreciate your
hate speech on CNN. This incident is getting very wide
coverage throughout the world. You've clearly exposed yourself
as a narrowminded bigot, and I guess that you deserve some
thanks for that. The bigots we know about are harmless. It's
such a shame that there's so many bigots we don't know about,
but who might be inspired by your hate speech to harm me or
my family.
Anyway, the purpose of my mail was simply to let you know
that I know what you are. You ought to be ashamed, but you
are probably not. You just don't know any better, and I pity
you.
Tuesday, 06 February, 2007. 10:08:40 PMCNN produced an appalling show about the hatred of atheists which is
pretty common in the United States. Under the guise of looking at the
issue, they created a platform for three religious people to speak
their hatred on national television, without an atheist on the show
to counter their hate speech.
The videos are linked from here:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/02/i_had_no_idea_cnn_had_gotten_t.php
One of the panel members says repeatedly that "atheists just need to shut up."
What would the reaction be if she had said that the "women just need to
shut up" or "the Jews just need to shut up."
And the sign behind them says "Why do atheists inspire such hatred?" I can
counter with the same argument. What if the sign said "Why do Jews
inspire such hatred?" or "Why do blacks inspire such hatred?"
They wouldn't get away with that for a second.
Tuesday, 06 February, 2007. 11:23:58 AMThree different websites disagree on the origin of the name Kristiana. Two
say it is Greek, and one says it is English. One says it means "follower of
Christ" and another says it means "annointed."
Monday, 05 February, 2007. 05:08:24 PMFrom the New York Times
article:
General Tsos Chicken
(In this Taiwanese version, the dish is hot and sour and lacks the sweetness of its Americanized counterpart.)
For the sauce:
1 tablespoon double-concentrate tomato paste, mixed with 1 tablespoon water
½ teaspoon potato flour
½ teaspoon dark soy sauce
1½ teaspoons light soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
3 tablespoons chicken stock or water
For the chicken:
12 ounces (about 4 to 5) skinless, boneless chicken thighs
½ teaspoon dark soy sauce
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons potato flour
1 quart peanut oil, more as needed
6 to 10 dried red chilies
2 teaspoons finely chopped ginger
2 teaspoons minced garlic
2 teaspoons sesame oil
Scallions, thinly sliced, for garnish.
1. Make the sauce by combining all the ingredients in a small bowl. Set aside.
2. To prepare the chicken, unfold the chicken thighs and lay them on a cutting board. Remove as much of the sinew as possible. (If some parts are very thick, cut them in half horizontally.) Slice a few shallow crosshatches into the meat. Cut each thigh into roughly ¼ -inch slices and place in a large bowl. Add the soy sauces and egg yolk and mix well. Stir in the potato flour and 2 teaspoons peanut oil and set aside. Using scissors, snip the chilies into ¾ -inch pieces, discarding the seeds. Set aside.
3. Pour 3½ cups peanut oil into a large wok, or enough oil to rise 1½ inches from the bottom. Set over high heat until the oil reaches 350 to 400 degrees. Add half the chicken and fry until crisp and deep gold, 3 to 4 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the chicken to a plate. Repeat with the second batch. Pour the oil into a heatproof container and wipe the wok clean.
4. Place the wok over high heat. Add 2 tablespoons peanut oil. When hot, add the chilies and stir-fry for a few seconds, until they just start to change color. Add the ginger and garlic and stir-fry for a few seconds longer, until fragrant. Add the sauce, stirring as it thickens. Return the chicken to the wok and stir vigorously to coat. Remove from the heat, stir in the sesame oil and top with scallions. Serve with rice. Serves 2 to 3. Adapted from The Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, by Fuchsia Dunlop.
Monday, 05 February, 2007. 03:35:57 PMRealtek has a source code driver for their ALC850 sound hardware which is on the ECS motherboard.
It's an ALSA driver which is not yet in the Linux kernel. This is good news because that means
that I can use the onboard sound instead of a PCI sound card.
Monday, 05 February, 2007. 01:45:27 PMI've been ugrading my desktop machine (helium) to an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ based system. I made a log
entry on it while I was testing, but dismantled the machine without synchronizing the log
with the server. The problem that I was having was some very erratic behavior with the power switch
and PCI cards. I bought a second motherboard from Fry's and RMA'd the first motherboard back to New Egg.
The second board is an ECS SLI Lite socket 939 board. It turns out that quite a few features of both
the first Foxconn board, and the ECS board just won't work with Linux. The NVidia chipset has built-in
networking and sound which are completely unsupported under Linux in any acceptable way (open source
drivers). It's not a big deal, because I'm going to be using PCI cards to support the network, sound,
and graphics. After installing the second board, I discovered that there was an issue with the power supply.
A test with another power supply confirmed that. The second power supply was a 300W unit which started
burning up from the current drain.
Saturday, 03 February, 2007. 08:06:08 PMHelium has been upgraded to an AMD Athlon 64 3200+. It's fast and I
like it, but honestly the motherboard I chose really sucks. It's
a Foxconn 6100K8MA. The specs looked good, which is why I bought it.
Socket 939, 4 GB max RAM, NVidia 6100 built-in graphics, sound, network,
SATA, and so on. The graphics look really good. My old computer was
using an NVidia GFX 2 MX400 card, so that was no big deal to get working.
I'm only interested in 2D graphics and the ability to drive a 1900x1600
pixel display as a future upgrade.
The problem is that the sound chip is completely unsupported (should have
looked it up) and the networking requires a proprietary NVidia driver
to activate. It said RealTek in the specs, but it's really just a
network transceiver. The rest of the network card is a secret NVidia
chipset.
No big deal. It's got 3 PCI slots, so I'm just going to go to Fry's
tomorrow and pick up cheap sound and network cards. Both of those should
be under $10 each. The main reason I needed to upgrade Helium was because
my old Intel i810 board was limited to 512 megs of RAM, and that wasn't
working well with VMWare. My new board supports 4 gigs, so I should be
good for a while.
Friday, 02 February, 2007. 01:13:24 AMPeroration - the concluding part of an oration or final enforcement of an argument.
Thursday, 01 February, 2007. 10:21:20 PMThe police in Boston are too stupid to tell the difference between
a Lite Brite and a bomb. The people accused of terrorizing the city
with their light emitting diodes are giving the morons in the press
exactly what they deserve.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx2ytr2Oyv4.