Everything2 New Writeups

Middleton and Prestwich by-election of 1940 (event)

2010-02-09T13:14:09Z

A by-election was called for the constituency of Middleton and Prestwich to be held on the 22nd May 1940 following the death of the incumbent Nairne Stewart Sandeman on the 23rd April 1940. In the circumstances, given that the nation was at war, the Conservative, Labour and Liberal parties had all agreed not to contest by-elections, and therefore when the local Conservative Association selected Lieutenant Ernest Everard Gates no serious opposition was expected to his election.

However, as was to prove the case throughout the war, other minor parties did not feel bound by this agreement and indeed were often keen to take advantage of the opportunity provided. The Independent Labour Party duly nominated one D Carradice, an official of the Municipal and General Workers Union as their candidate, but he later decided to withdraw "in view of the present tension". Therefore when nominations closed on the 13th May 1940 the only opposition faced by the Conservative candidate Ernest Everard…

Candied bacon (thing)

2010-02-09T04:57:32Z

"the bacon overload could go the way of pirates, ninjas, robots, monkeys and zombies" - Peter Ryan

I expect that along with millions of ex-vegetarians, I was came to be undone by the unbearably insidious temptation that is bacon. As I recall, I ended four years of no-meatedness at the Nottingham Trent University one morning as the staff were serving bacon butties in the refectory. Something savoury wafted across, and like the character following a wavy cartoon scent line across a screen, I found myself at the counter, drawn to one of the most seductive foods smells I know.

When I moved in with Christine, she was practically a veggie. I say practically, as she was an ovo-lacto-pisco-chicken variety of vegetarian. All that changed,…

The Strawberry Statement (review)

2010-02-08T17:21:24Z

The Statement

April 24, 1967, and the 1960s (as they exist in popular imagination) were at full flower. The Haight hadn't become a slum yet. January had seen the Human Be-In. Summer would be christened the Summer of Love and autumn would see the Exorcism of the Pentagon. Student numbers swelled as baby boomers hoped to wait out the war in Vietnam (which Dr. King had only just denounced) on college campuses. Just that semester, Columbia University had its first sit-ins.

In response, Professor Herbert Deane, the Associate Dean of Graduate Faculties, said that he gave no more thought to students' political views than to whether or not they liked strawberries.¹ Deane afterward and often insisted he had been misquoted. He meant, he said, he gave this minimal amount of thought to students' political views only when they were not well-argued or well-reasoned. Never mind. A Dean named Deane, as…

All Eyes and Hunger (dream)

2010-02-08T05:22:10Z

In her dream she was
past thin, impoverished
shivering at room temperature in a thin shirt

She sat in a rocking chair, looking out a window
watching the snow soften her view:
A brick apartment building,
a rusting fire escape

She caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror
Cobalt eyes set against pale skin
the starved appeal of a Slavic breadline princess

It made her shiver and she awoke.

_{thanks to Evaline}

Top three level iterations of Glowing Fish's Rule 34 application to Gilligan's Island (essay)

2010-02-08T01:35:32Z

In his write-up of Rule 34, Glowing Fish proposes that it is unlikely for Internet porn to exist for each of the 5400 different possible sexual arrangements of the seven castaways on Gilligan's Island. ^{To be fair, Glowing Fish does not actually claim that there are 5400 combinations, but just points out that "seven factorial is 5400" (which he later corrected to say it actually isn't, it is only 5040)} But there's a question to be developed in the mathematical basis of this calculation, and to show why this is, I present to you below a list of the top three level iterations of this formula, that is, all possible sexual groupings of three or fewer residents of Gilligan's Island. Annotated.

For all intentions of this demonstration, we will ignore the null set -- that is, the possibility that someone out there has made Internet porn involving Gilligan's Island, but eschewing inclusion of any characters from the show. Who knows, maybe…

Rule 35 (thing)

2010-02-07T21:37:47Z

One of the rules of the Internet, and the counterpart to Rule 34 (if it can be imagined, there is porn of it without exception):

If there is not porn of it, it will be created. No exceptions.

Humanity loves fetishes, and humanity will continue to love fetishes until it dies off. Simple as that. Therefore, it creates porn to satisfy people with the same fetish. It's pretty amazing how many times Rules 34 and 35 have been fulfilled - if you look hard enough, you can find pretty much anything.

Of course, it might take a while for Rule 35 to be fulfilled... but, then again, the anticipation is always better than actually having something, right? ...right?

Rule 34 (thing)

2010-02-07T19:35:15Z

"Rule 34" is a rule on the internet, that states that there exists porn of everything. I had originally taken the rule to refer specifically to fan fiction, and the transformation of every imaginable television program, movie, comic book, or other entertainment medium into pornographic drawings and stories. But the rule could, I suppose, exist for acts or preferences.

And Rule 34 is not true. I know that here I am assailing one of the pillars of the internet, but I will explain why Rule 34 is not true.

To do this, we have to know some basic theory about the number line. The number line, which stretches from negative infinity to positive infinity, has an infinite amount of positive integers, and also an infinite amount of negative integers. Although these numbers are infinite, they are infinitely outnumbered by the even more infinitely large set of rational numbers. And those are infinitely outnumbered by the irrational numbers.

Rule 34 might be true…

Michael Abrash (log)

2010-02-07T18:23:20Z

"This is the best time to be a programmer."

I remember reading the quote above from one of Michael Abrash's programming articles in Dr. Dobb's Journal back in the early 90's. He was talking about how computer hardware and software had progressed so far the past decade or so. Computers were becoming more and more powerful, and software technology was rapidly advancing, making the present time the most fun times to be a programmer. This was in an era when PC's were mostly running on Intel 386 and 486 CPUs, and the dominant operating system being MS-DOS and Windows 3.1.

Today (February, 2010), I would like to say that this is the best time to be a programmer. It was fun before, and it's even more fun now. With the Internet you have access to an endless amount of resources and tutorials. You can download various freely available source code and tools and learn the valuable techniques on how to create similar ones.

It's a good time to take advantage of all the programming…

To Kill a Mockingbird (essay)

2010-02-07T15:28:36Z

The most beautiful books in the world are never those with rhythm and reason interwoven within their pages, though they look pretty, and, to some extent, are. The Principia is not beautiful, though to a certain mind it comes close; nor are the works of lesser men than genius, men of half the calibre of Gauss, a quarter the power of Mozart. Shakespeare, for all his lilting tongue, is not beautiful, though there are moments when the poetry of his prose leaps off the page, and blazes in magnificent conflagrations of sheer, exquisite tenderness, and raw, unmatched talent. He is perfect; perfection need not be beautiful, just as gods need not be kind to be gods, as kings need not be merciful to be kings.

Beauty is a strange beast. We search for it, in myriad corners of the world, never realising it cannot be found – only made. We declare ordinary women princesses over others, mortal men more beautiful than the gods, though beauty is always, and shall always be, democratic –…

The Calorie Count (idea)

2010-02-07T15:00:16Z

In my residency for Family Practice some patients stand out in my memory. They are the ones that I struggled with: what was the right thing to do?

A woman in her 60s was admitted to the service. She was very disabled by a long-standing disease call scleroderma. She lived in a group home for disabled elders. I had never met her before.

She was admitted for a DVT, a deep venous thrombosis. This is a blood clot in the deep veins of one's legs, though it can occasionally be in the arms. If the clot extends above the knee, there is a risk that pieces will break off and go to the lungs. That is called a pulmonary embolus and can cause severe damage to the lungs or death.

We treat DVTs with heparin initially and then coumadin. At that time, we only had intravenous heparin. It had to run continuously. The heparin does not break down the clot; rather, it keeps it from extending. The coumadin is a tablet. Usually we keep someone on coumadin for 6 months after a DVT. Risks for a DVT…

The Bounceback (idea)

2010-02-07T13:17:20Z

In my third year of residency training in Family Practice, the county health clinic doctors had a disagreement with the Internal Medicine Service; overnight they switched their patients to us. Not only did our number of inpatients double, but the county health doctors took care of 2/3 of the HIV and AIDS patients in the city. This was before the current cocktail of drugs. It was slowly lethal and in our area it was mostly young men that were dying.

The county health doctors took care of their patients on a shoestring budget and with a very limited formulary of inexpensive drugs. They were incredibly good at keeping their people out of the hospital.

When one of their patients came in, they were sick as snot. Really, really sick. We felt like we were running to keep up with the county doctors' comprehensive knowledge of AIDS.

One man was in his 30s, with AIDS and a falling CD4 count, almost to nothing. He had fevers and facial pain. The dentists thought it was his sinuses.…

Chunk Systems (review)

2010-02-07T10:55:06Z

I decided the other day that it was necessary to upgrade my music-generating capability with the purchase of more effects processors. After a relatively small amount of research (reading the gear review issue of Bass Player Magazine and googling the Talkbass forums), I impulsively bought a set of two pedals from Chunk Systems, a small electronics company based in Sydney. They are the 'Agent 00Funk Mark II' envelope filter (pronounced 'double-oh funk' like James Bond. With a name like that, how can it not be awesome?) and the 'Brown Dog' gated fuzz effect.

Uh, I'm not an expert on analogue audio signal processing; can you explain what the hell do they actually do?

Fair enough. Let's start with the 'Brown Dog'. It's basically a distortion pedal. Imagine a plain old audible tone at a particular pitch. It looks like a sine wave. All distortion and fuzz effects work by 'chopping off' the tips of the waveform, making it look more and more like a pure square wave. This…

February 7, 2010 (event)

2010-02-07T07:00:19Z

CAUTION: This is a stream of crap, yet I must get it out.

I made a bad life decision a couple of nights ago. I drank two pints of beer, and after that, really wanted to get home because I…

The Ecstasy of Sister Margaret (person)

2010-02-07T06:54:00Z

Sister Margaret had a righteous hump on her back. A hump of belligerent, Fairy Tale proportions. The Hump inspired hours of ramrod posture in dedicated slouchers. It was mean-tempered and straddled the nun's neck like a horrible parrot. The Hump was deeply dedicated, and would know no satisfaction until Sister Margaret could only see her feet when walking.

But, Sister Margaret worked around it without a word of complaint. If she wanted to look at something, she just got above it. Sister Margaret imagined that this tactic drove The Hump wild with frustration.

Sister Margaret stands on the second floor terrace, peering down into the courtyard. Below her, Sister Genevieve lays on the grass reading The Bible. Sister Genevieve, who sees no point in lying on the grass like your average person,…

Peter Sotos (person)

2010-02-07T03:41:54Z

If the name "Peter Sotos" means anything to you, chances are you think he's vile, and loathsome.

If you've read him, then you know he's vile, and loathsome. And chances are, Peter Sotos would agree.

What Wikipedia will tell you about Sotos is, he's "a Chicago-born writer and musician. In his books, Sotos examines sadistic sexual criminals and sexually violent pornography, particularly involving children. In 1984, while attending the Art Institute of Chicago, Sotos began producing the controversial magazine Pure, notable as the first zine dedicated to serial killer lore. In addition to offering many details about the crimes of serial killers and Nazis, the text in the magazine praises them (emphasis mine)."

"A photocopy from a magazine of child pornography was used as the cover of issue #2 of Pure. This cover led to Sotos's arrest on charges of obscenity and possession of child pornography. The charges of obscenity were…

Tetris as Soviet Metaphor (idea)

2010-02-06T17:11:45Z

Tetris is the kind of game that only a Soviet could have envisioned. As yerricde points out in his writeup, Pajitnov et. al were far from the first to conceive of omino puzzles; but their version of it, upon even the most cursory deconstruction, shouts out a strong Soviet influence.

First, look at the goal of the game: You, aka the central planner, must cram as many differently shaped and coloured pieces into the same rigid box as you can. Doesn't matter who or what they are - some are tall, some short, some can be used in many innovative ways and some are square and immobile; all serve a purpose under Bolshevism, and you achieve points by maximizing harmony (aka creating lines). And when you do so, the threat of systemic collapse is reduced a little bit.

There are no spare parts, either. Some later versions allow you to "bank" a piece for later retrieval, but this is a bourgeois, capitalist innovation. In…

GULAG Spa (idea)

2010-02-06T14:46:03Z

Fat and unhappy

61% of adults in the United States were overweight or obese (BMI > 25) in 1999. Today it's much worse. The prevalence of overweight adolescents has nearly tripled in the past 2 decades. The economic cost of obesity in the United States was about $117 billion in 2000 (data from US Surgeon General).

The fat guy to the left, over by the window, he knows all this. He has already tried all kinds of diets, reducing pills, Weight Watcher meetings. Why is he still overweight? Because he has no spine, no willpower to stay away from burgers, barbeques and beer. He longs for a touch of a wizard's wand. He wants to be magically deprived of all excessive alimentation, to be forcibly conjured to exercise – and then one day step forward for all to see as the slender, attractive (albeit middle-aged), gentleman he is in his dreams. For such a spell he is…

pad (thing)

2010-02-06T14:09:58Z

In pop or rock music, a pad is a sustained sound usually created by a synthesizer. It is often used as a backing behind vocals or solo instruments, and tends to give a warm, mellow character to the music. Pads are often based on the sounds of strings, but brass, electronic pianos or purely electronic sounds might also be used.

test drive (fiction)

2010-02-06T04:27:18Z

We were in the car discussing light fixtures for a home we will never live in when the thought drifted by - this feels more like a date than a test drive. Back at the dealership a buddy of his suggested I take the car home for an extended test drive since I couldn't decide if I wanted the car enough to buy it. After my salesman left some of the guys he works with asked if I was coming out for drinks. The next time I saw him we went for another drive. During lunch he asked if I had decided which car I was going to buy. When I told him I wasn't sure he made sure I knew that the Honda I was considering was attractively priced.

The only people a salesman knows are current customers and future buyers. Still I'm listening to his voice noticing how many different colors I can pick out in his eyes. He was there to try and sell…

February 5, 2010 (personal)

2010-02-05T21:41:59Z

This will probably be quite a short daylog, and is posted mainly as a follow-up to July 10, 2008, and to anyone else who is interested. In that node I talked about how my wife and I split up in September 2007, and how I was coping with seeing my young son at weekends, and maintaining contact with him through the week.

Anyway, just to let you all know, Elke and Callum moved back in with me at Christmas-time, officially the 29th of December. We'd had a heart-to-heart in the summer which led to reconciliation, but as Callum was about to start school for the first time in August, and we didn't want to rush things, we waited until Christmas for the move. Callum has now started a new school here in Lanark, and is settling in well. Elke and I are enjoying our time together again, and things are much happier all round. I just thought I'd let you all know.

Thanks for all your good wishes everyone!

February 5, 2010 (thing)

2010-02-05T21:09:53Z

On becoming a year older

Yesterday I danced the polka around the house with Tessie, and the laughter generated was a real treat for all of us.

I'm not a great one for remembering birthdays; each trip to the pharmacy to collect Christine's prescriptions results in my getting her details wrong when they ask me to confirm her birthdate. "Oh, it's the thirteenth or twenty-third, I think. March. Or maybe April..." as I hang my head, or occasionally chuckle. But one of the advantages of being somewhat exotic is that people tend to remember me, and they laugh and hand over the drugs anyway. It's sad, because if they'd only point and laugh and shout "Wrong!", it might reinforce the date in my poor old mind.

I spent about ten years in the clutches of Jehovah's Witnesses,…

child (person)

2010-02-05T14:14:29Z

I'm yours forever

A shelf of engineering manuals defy gravity, books everywhere, the desk , the floor, and under a high thin window. On a bench covered in more books was a corner to sit and read in the silver drenched light of days so quiet you could hear clouds rolling by, the smell of oncoming rain in the air. In a scurry of leaves , clean laundry began whipping , waving and snapping the clothesline for attention fearful of getting wet. Child watched the wash wishing for someone to play with, and imagination of a tired body to be out by the clothesline playing with imaginary friends, and counted , yes there were enough to play ball . Diving under the bed , pushing aside a stack of books to reach way back for a bat and ball he ran out to play ! Yeah!

Whipped off the line , the clothes summersaulted and tumbled up to play again dispensed into whirlwinds around the bases . The first…