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Hello, Old Fingers

This was a surprise. I’ve been having some medical issues these past couple of weeks (that’s neither here nor there). A side-effect …

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I propose that Texas (and several other states’) women impose a law prohibiting urinals/troughs/etc. and that in men’s restrooms there be sensors (can be IR or ultrasonic to protect their boyish modesty) in stalls to ensure that even toilet pee-ers must sit, not stand subject to fines or arrest. If Texas (and several other states’) legislators are going to be dicks about women, then maybe it’s time the women make the men’s lives a bit less convenient. Quid pro quo.

Maybe a tax on Viagra and related drugs to fund teen and low-income post-natal care and supplies? And that’s just one easy idea. I’m sure there are many, many options available to quo men’s quids (both pro and amateur). Lysistrata, anyone?

On June 24, 2013, we had an annoying little outage that affected all the WordPress sites on this domain. It ultimately came down to a DNS subdomain issue that mysteriously reared its head after a few years of non-eventfulness. Once it was figured out, a simple change of settings set things straight. Sorry for any inconvenience.

The Photoshop CC Problem

Like many visually creative people, I use Photoshop. Not that there’s a lot of choice in the matter; it is pretty much the only respected player in the game right now. It’s annoying, then, that Adobe has thrown out a dubious marketing structure with its new “Creative Cloud”.

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I was perusing the Wikipedia List of Female Astronauts.

Something I noticed from this: if you remove U.S. women astronauts, the list is really short. Of 56 women who have made it into space (out of 530 total space travelers as of Jan. 2013), US=45, rest of world=11 (USSR/RUS-3; CAN-2; JPN-2; UK-1; FRA-1; KOR-1; CHN-1). It shifts slightly if you consider mixed citizenship: IND/USA-1; IRN/USA-1.

Interpret this as you will.

Mudskipper: To Mars and Beyond

There has been a lot of talk in recent weeks and months about various schemes to get people to Mars. Some are suggestions for an orbital flight while others talk of landing and/or building a colony of between a few people and several thousand. As visitors to this site are aware, I have also thought about this; my solution was the Mudskipper. Here are some details:

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I’ve installed a new theme. My plan is for it to be the last of these for a while (still, no promises). It’s a bit better behaved than the previous one and works marvelously with the WP 3.6 betas. Even so, I’m sure there are quite a few legacy formatting problems I’ll need to track down from older posts. I appreciate your patience.

What language you use can matter in a tech society. On twitter, 140 characters divided by 6 (average 5-char word length plus space) equals about 23-1/3 words max per text — emoticons notwithstanding. However, if you write in Chinese logograms, you can achieve up to 140 words (well, more if you are clever with linguistics and don’t punctuate) in a single tweet. Up to 6x more! That’s a few paragraphs for most people.

Similarly, a picture of a sunset or of kittehs being all lol-catty has more meaning in a single expression than a book of words could adequately convey. So, in a way, LOLcats (and pics of cute animals in general) are more profound than you might initially suspect.

On April 18, the vote for H.R. 624 — CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) — was taken in the U.S. House of Representatives. This privacy-eroding bill passed easily. Sadly, all three NM congresspeople chose to vote in the ‘yea’ column: Michelle Lujan Grisham (D, NM 1st), Steve Pearce (R, NM 2nd), and Ben Luján (D, NM 3rd). I expect this sort of idiocy from Pearce but had higher hopes for the other two. Guess not. Let’s hope the Senate gets this one right.