Look! My spouse knitted me a Dalek!

She’s gonna make me a plush Cthulhu next. Sorry guys, she’s taken.

Truly effective loafing requires a lot of work.

If one looks back at the last two months or so of these random lists, the same things keep showing up; I’m not sure if it’s the contents of the solid state drive, or the Sansa randomization algorithms. Oh well.

Tonight I get to look through telescopes.

1. “One of the Boys” – Katy Perry
2. “Gagged and Tied” – that dog.
3. “Ocean of Noise” – Arcade Fire
4. “Salvation” – The Cranberries
5. “I Just Wanna Get Along” – The Breeders
6. “A Talk With George” – Jonathan Coulton
7. “Part of A Rainbow” – The Badlees
8. “The Letter”- The Clarks
9. “The Guitar” – They Might Be Giants
10. “Love Song” – Tesla

When I read stories like this, I’m really rather discouraged with the state this country finds itself in. Are we so concerned with security from nebulous threats that we’re willing to give up basic privacy and flagrantly violate the privacy of others?

For those too lazy to click the link, it’s a story about a school district issuing laptop computers to students (an increasingly common occurence, and not necessarily a bad one, in my opinion), then using the onboard webcams to spy on students, both at school and elsewhere, and subsequently punishing a student for something “innappropriate” (I’m guessing it involved nakedness) at home, offering spycam pics as evidence.

While I perhaps understand the motivation behind certain security measures being installed on institutionally-issued computer hardware for network security and usability concerns (I’m sure the kids don’t have admin rights on the box to install things, for example, and I expect a certain level of filtering to prevent exposure to viruses and “objectionable material”, whatever that might be), but using integrated cameras for surveillance is over the line in my opinion.

Kids will be kids; you expect a certain amount of non-sactioned use with regard to school equipment; some are going to push boundaries and engage in teenage tomfoolery. That’s what the filters and locked-down user accounts are for. It’s no business of the school administration what the kid does at home; that’s strictly the purvue of parents.

Look at it this way: suppose my kid (or yours) was in the middle of doing her homework in her room and took a break to change clothes in view of the open machine? The school does not have any need to have potential access to that.

For my part, if a school ever issues this kind of hardware* to my kid, regardless of the level of security installed, the kid is immediately getting three things from me:

1. A thorough explanation of what kind of security measures the school’s likely going to be using, and an admonition that Big Brother is watching, and that the best thing would be to not use the equipment for unauthorized purposes

2. A roll of black electrical tape to cover any integrated lenses

3. A current copy of the knoppix live cd for emergencies, because occasionally, the responsible thing is going to conflict with the school’s “err on the side of caution” policy, though if this option gets used, there better be a damned good reason.

To me, that’s the only responsible parent thing to do.

_______________

* – keeping in mind that my kids have access to their own personal computers at home, access to which (as well as activity on) is monitored by me. I understand that not everyone is going to have these advantages.

It took me approximately 90 seconds of “Shook me like a prayer” and maybe four more of “Crazy Girl” to have me clicking “Buy.”

Upon reaching a certain age, one may leave behind certain childish things…

…but not all childish things.

PFFFFFFFT!!!!!

Among other things* this weekend, we took a trip (at my son’s urging) to the Science Museum of Virginia, which is twenty minutes from my driveway (and has been as long as I’ve lived here), but I’d never managed to visit before.

It was a nice day out for the family; we played with a bunch of hands-on physics experiments, watched a planetarium show and an IMAX movie about sturgeon, tested our neurological reaction time, and most importantly, watched some trained rats play baseketball.

Even if there were a couple of technical difficulties with some of the electronic exhibits, we still had a good time.

Also, we got to ride a Segway personal transport, and none of us fell off. My offspring showed greater skill than I, largely through their posession of a lower center of gravity.

* – “other things” included a father-daughter activity with the firstborn, which involved lots of Karaoke (during which my daughter’s song choices impressed me greatly), a few silly dances, the loss of a banana in a chocolate fountain, and entirely too much Taylor Swift for either of our tastes.

I also had my hand scratched up by a kitten, and spent way too damned money much on a new dishwasher. At least it’s a nice one.

Here’s some randomly generated, and totally non-romantic tunes for your Valentine’s Day/President’s Day weekend, where I guess we’re all supposed to go buy some mattresses then put them to use recreationally.

1. “Poker Face” – Lady Gaga
2. “So Unsexy” – Alanis Morisette
3. “Living in the Sky with Diamonds” – Cobra Starship
4. “On the Bus Mall” – The Decembrists
5. “Be Quick or be Dead” – Iron Maiden
6. “F**k and Run” – Liz Phair
7. “Soil, Soil” – Tegan and Sara
8. “Your Racist Friend” – TMBG
9. “Ben’s Song” – Sarah McLachlan
10. “Hot N Cold (rock mix)” – Katy Perry

With the weather being, shall we say, uncommon, for this region at this time of year, I’m hearing more and more comments from folks, both personally and in the media, questioning the validity of global warming/climate change, taking particular shots at one Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, former Senator, Vice President, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, and ardent environmental activist.

This bugs me, not so much because people are making fun of a person I hold in high regard (and the guy’s admittedly easy to make fun of; he makes fun of himself pretty regularly), but because these people who think themselves so clever have the science of it so terribly wrong. It’s one more of those examples of people’s positions and beliefs being shaped more by emotional appeals (in this case, rampant anti-intellectualism and “anti-elitism”) than factual evidence that the BBC wrote about, and I pointed to a few posts ago.

In actual fact, the kind of weather events we’re experiencing today are, at least in part, a symptom of the disruption to weather patterns caused by large-scale changes in the global climate, rather than a refutation of the concept.

Once explained, the circumstances make a lot of sense. "Global Warming" refers not to it necessarily being "hotter" day to day, but rather to the average global temperature increasing a degree or two over decades. it’s not the kind of thing a person’s going to notice on the micro level, but can have significant effects on a planet-wide scale.

On the macro level, though, an increase in global temperatures has wide-ranging effects; a higher average temperature, over time, will, for example, cause things like glaciers and polar ice caps to become smaller, because the normal freeze-thaw cycle gets disrupted, and less water re-freezes over time.

All that unfrozen water’s got to go somewhere; and that somewhere is oceans, lakes, and other waterways. Sea levels are rising slightly, but that’s not really the issue yet. A lot of that excess water evaporates and ends up in the atmosphere. A more saturated atmosphere leads to more precipitation, and bigger, more powerful, unpredictable storm systems, including stronger hurricanes and big snow storms like we’ve been getting this year.

So, yeah, the kind of stoms we’re experiencing actually provide compelling scientific evidence for the idea of climate change, according to scientists, who’ve been warning about exactly this sort of thing for some time.

And, I know I’d rather trust the scientists at NOAA, the National Wildlife Federation and the Union of Concerned Scientists on the issue than the conservative contrarian talking heads.

…but then, even the Bush Administration agreed with the scientists on this one.

Maybe that’s something we should all be writing on our hands.

Posed for a pre-race photo, here are this year’s entries for the cub scout pinewood derby:

Three of us built entries this year. From left to right, Mary’s mouse racer, Andrew’s flaming car, and my last-minute Conestoga wagon.

Hopefully, we’ll do well.