Песец

Every day I surf the web and collect links, then send them out via private email.  Maybe I should post them here.  Most links come from Reddit via Imgur.  The most common type of link is a puppy-photo, because that goes over well with my email audience.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/prosecutors-drop-drug-trafficking-case-fedex-39945630
    Fedex was targeted by the DEA for two years, apparently for refusing to pay the bribes that UPS did.

http://imgur.com/JWqceCx
    "Loch Ness woofer".

http://imgur.com/DIF4pZb
    We're out of dog treats? How could this happen???

http://66.media.tumblr.com/9dfb50a2a8f541b37e67df4f5474e390/tumblr_nmmpz5F28N1tj59g2o2_r1_500.gif
    Time is an endless 3-hour loop!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTUP4ET2IE0
    It gets better around 0:53.

https://twitter.com/joeheenan/status/744435423812923392
    Father's Day breakfast, made out of the most dangerous objects in the house.

http://i.imgur.com/PO746De.jpg
    Father's Day present from Potter fans.

http://i.imgur.com/xdZ7GxG.png
    Presumably this requires lemon juice to keep it edible.

http://imgur.com/bWXuUBV
    A bird.

https://i.reddituploads.com/b148c4b8180f4149953369f82fbc1140?
fit=max&h=1536&w=1536&s=5a64643c0eae45502de7961af96be22c
    A cat.

http://imgur.com/O76DLjA
    A dog.

The title of this post is from an article about Scott Fistler, the Arizona Republican who changed his name to "Cesar Chavez" and is now running for office as a "Democrat" (but still using Republican tactics).  I used a wildcard Google search "a few * short of a *" to find other examples of this snowclone.

The first hit is A few sandwiches short of a picnic, which has an entry at Wiktionary.  That entry gives a synonym "one card shy of a full deck".

The next hit is A few X short of a Y at the Snowclones database, which lists these examples

• a few bananas short of a bushel
• a few sprinkles short of a sundae
• a few hosannas short of a miracle
• a few smarties short of a lollybag
• a few beers short of a barrel

The snowclone entry links to the Canonical List of Fulldeckisms which is a 1994 list from USENET.  Some of its entries are rather dated now, such as

• A return with no gosub
• A VGA card and a Herc monitor
• An 8080 in a 68000 environment
• An Apple //e on UUCP
• An XT clone in a Pentium zone
• Blew his O-rings
• Her dialing thumb must be broken
• In need of a ROM upgrade
• Mainspring's wound too tight
• Metronome needs oil
• Missing a few catalog cards / gears / marbles
• Nine pence in the shilling
• Overruns above 110 baud
• Pins 2 and 3 (RS-232) permanently connected to ground
• RS232C brain with a DIN connector
• Running at 300 baud
• Single-sided, low density
• Slept too close to his radium-dial watch
• The fan is working but the freon's leaked out
• Thinks at 5 baud
• Thinks cellular phones are carbon-based life forms
• Thinks E=MC² is a rap star
• Too many birds on her antenna
• Using a 1S-2D floppy for brains in a world of hard disks

Google's list then includes some items that duplicate the USENET list ("a few fries short of a happy meal", "a few bricks shy of a load", etc.)

Then there's the Not too bright list, including items such as

• A few screws short of a hardware store
• A few peas short of a casserole
• A few Bradys short of a bunch

Then there's the Euphamisms for Stupid, which is written by a college professor who apparently doesn't know how to spell "euphemism".  Anyway, his list doesn't include anything not previously seen.

And that's the first page of Google results.  Surely no one would look any further?

Okay, so I clicked "next" and got

• A few eggs short of a dozen
• a few cattle short of a ranch
• a few plums short of a fruit pie

Guess I can stop now.  Sorry!

Terry does great work in his little nook of the art world.  For another excellent example, see Springtime in Indiana.  If you like food (and who doesn't?), there are some nice examples of Cheez-Its and Oreos.  For some lower-brow material, try his poop joke or muffin suicide.  Since it's art, we can talk about masturbation.

I wrote a furvey back in 2004.  It was only the second furry thing I ever published, yet still today much of it rings just as true (or false) as it ever did.  The main thing I would change is that the “bird” character should actually be a “blind fox” who can’t even tell what his own species is.  In my Furry Fandom travels since then, many people have mentioned that I seem to have a Fox Inside® that I never talk about, and are pleased when I tell them that “Pyesetz means ‘fox’ in Russian” like somehow that explains things.

Unfortunately, I can’t just do a global search/replace to change “bird” to “fox” because then question 28 (external manifestations of furriness) would no longer make any sense — in the historical event being recounted, I actually did use an avian reproductive metaphor, not a vulpine one.  I have put in approximately zero study in the ways of foxes.  Did you know that fox eyes have vertical pupils like cats?  It was not until this year that I finally did a Google image-search to confirm that.

The word “cat” occurs six times in the furvey.  In question 21 it is what people mistakenly call me because they don’t know a fox when they see one.  In question 30 it is the furry species of some random girl I once met.  Whenever a cat is mentioned, it is always in the role of “Not Me“.

The word “horse” occurs only once, in question 38 (the spiritual-reincarnation animal).  There is an oblique reference to a TV show called Mr. Ed that aired 50 years ago.  Only his co-star Wilbur could hear Mr. Ed talk, sort of like the original Mr. Snuffleupagus on Sesame Street that only Big Bird could hear.

YouTube shows 239,000 results for the query “MR. ED”, including many complete episodes from season 3 (seasons 1 & 2 are on Hulu, which prohibits access from Canada).  I am afraid to watch these old episodes, for fear that the show will not be as good as I remember.  But I did dare to watch the one-minute sketch Mr. Ed and the Dodgers.  Good God, those special effects were horrible!  The scene of Mr. Ed sliding into second base looked positively painful.  And never mind the impossible physics of Mr. Ed batting the ball with his teeth!

But maybe that was the point after all.  A talking animal is ridiculous, as anyone with horse sense knows.  Mr. Ed was an impossible illusion and he wanted you to know that, so you could laugh along with him at the absurdity of his existence.

*Ahem*  Anyway, it was just a TV show.  About a horse.  Of course!

I should just pack it in and move to Blogspot.  This LiveJournal just isn't very furry.  Who am I kidding?  I don’t wear a fursuit, I rarely write furry stories, and the only fursonal drawing I ever bought got ruined during the move to Canada.  There is no place in this Fandom for “an anthropomorphized Homo erectus pretending to be a cat wearing a dogsuit”.  I never have any drama caused by my packmates’ unmentionably-disgusting fursonal habits.  And Wifey would have a fit if I ever did anything that SomethingAwful.com would consider *typical furry behaviour*.  No-sir-ree-bob, we run a prim & proper household here; there is absolutely no reason for Child Protective Services to impound our geeklets “for their own good”.  Well, yes, we do have open-air piles of corrosive dihydrogen monoxide crystals at our homestead, but that’s the government’s fault.  Why don’t they clean these things?  Get that DHMO off my lawn!  It was only a few weeks ago that a fellow down by Sarnia was enveloped by DHMO crystals and died.  There outta be a law!

So, um, Objective Reality.  As I’ve mentioned previously, I think that Objective Reality actually exists, but is beyond our ken.  We live in a Subjective Reality that corresponds to the real world (more or less, sometimes a lot less) but is always separate from it.  In contradistinction to Plato, who believed that the material world is merely a shadow of the Real World of Ideas, I believe that the objects in the universe are just exactly what they are, but our finite ideas about those objects are mere shadows of the infinite ideas that would truly describe Objective Reality.  Unfortunately for our egos, our ideas about our ideas are also mere shadows of the True meta-ideas about how the universe really works.  And so on, to infinity.  There is just no way to think our way out of our sub-reality and into the real world.

I like this religion because it allows me to dismiss out-of-paw some of the wacky ideas that are floating around the noösphere.  Anyone who thumps his Bible as “the complete Word of God” is obviously deluded, because the complete Word of God must be infinitely long and so cannot be captured by any book of limited pages.  There used to be a lot of well-respected physicists who thought that Newton’s F=ma was Reality, but of course it could only ever have been Approximation.  Today, there are probably some scientists who think that Einstein's F=ma ∕ √1−(v²/c²) is Reality, but we *know* that this too must be Approximation because it is a finite formula with only a few variables.  In Reality, everything in the universe depends on everything else for each of its properties.  For practical purposes we can safely ignore most things most of the time—but occasionally something that we thought could be ignored will turn out to have been critically important, such as the effect of Hurricane Katrina upon President W.’s war plans.  This is the conundrum of our existence: we must approximate because we cannot perceive Objective Reality, but “Reality bites” and so we cannot approximate without risk.

Another nice feature of this religion is that it explains the existence of Magic.  As a professional computer programmer, I could hardly profess my Faith in any clockwork-universe philosophy that rejects Magic.  How then could I explain what it is that I do all day?  Arthur Clark said that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, which is sometimes paraphrased as "Magic is technology you don’t understand” (see Zekmalados’ comment here).  To connect this with Objective Reality, I claim that “Magic is useful activity based on approximations of the laws of physics that you don’t happen to know”.  Since the Real laws of physics are infinitely complicated, no one can know all of their useful approximations, so for each person there are things he can do that will be perceived by others as Magic.  With a little practice, you can learn to perceive your own activities as Magic even though you know the physics approximations that make them work.  Do you understand how the “quantum tunnelling” effect works?  You can use a cell phone anyway, but it’s Magic to you!

I’ll admit to a certain vanity in my thoughts about Magic.  I believe that I have more Magic in my right rear dewclaw than you could find in an entire conference room full of Harry Potter fans, but I realize that this belief is Approximation and some Potter fans actually do have the Talent.  Still, it is a useful thought because it helps me to feel superior to the Mundanes.

Regarding E₈ and string theory: Oh dear, this post is too long already.  Maybe I’ll get to those next time.  Meanwhile, here’s a random disconnected link to a certain author’s thoughts on similar subjects.

(About comments at newspaper websites): "It's as though when you order a sirloin steak, it comes with a side of maggots."

— Gene Weingarten (who has won two Pulitzer prizes but I had never heard of him before this mention).  RSS added, but I'm not sure whether I'll keep it.

Tim Minchin's White Wine in the Sun:

Besides the ridiculously large number of syllables attached to so few beats, one can also appreciate the bizarre fingering on some of the piano chords (Minchin gave up piano lessons after three years and is now mostly self-taught).

Further info: Wikipedia entry, lyrics.

Hat tip: Pharyngula.

I don't really have a website.  I used to have Furtopia, but I messed up and my account was frozen.  I used to be a paid member here at LiveJournal, but I had to cut costs.  For a while it seemed I didn't "really" need a website since I could just embed images directly in journal posts, but LiveJournal recently (and silently) stopped allowing that.  As usual, they didn't reply to my support request, so I'm left guessing as to why they did it.  My guess: it allows people to not buy LiveJournal memberships because they don't really need the ScrapBook® feature!  If that is really the reason, the new owners have flushed brad's original raison d'être for this site and I should avoid paying them on principle.  That's too bad because I really liked the (poorly-documented) RSS feed of friends-only posts.  It was my favourite paid feature.

A few months ago I created a Google Sites website.  It seemed like it might fill the bill, although the documentation for how to write JavaScript for it seemed rather complicated, so I put off learning more about it.

Last night was the beginning of Rosh Hashanah.  Since "Mr. Bear" and I are both Jewish, I generally make a show of not doing any paid work on major Jewish holidays.  What to do instead?  I worked on my Google site.  Problem: it is difficult to figure out how images stored in Google's File Cabinet (example) are to be hot-linked from other websites (example — can you see the laptop photo?).  In general, it seems that Google Sites is too concerned with preventing you from doing things that will make Google look bad and not concerned enough with ease of (re)use.  Also, their Terms of Service allow them to delete your site at any time for any reason or no reason.  Hey, if I didn't care about long-term storage or customized programming, I would use Imgur!

So I restarted another old project: find an ISP.  I wanted

• Server physically located in Waterloo, Ont. (since we have plenty of connectivity here);
• Runs Linux so I don't have to learn another operating system;
• Offers ssh shell access so I don't have to learn another "website control panel";
• Virtual Private Server technology so I can get root access even with "el cheapo" shared hosting;
• PHP and MySQL for custom programming (which is what initially attracted me to Furtopia);
• About $7/month, which is what WestHost used to charge for this feature-set (but they're in Utah, the cheap plan is now $9 and doesn't include ssh anymore).

Last night I found lots of ISPs that had *some* of these features, but none had *all* of them.  And reading through HostSearch was depressing; so many of these hosts have gone out of business after posting their ads.  Consider AroundKW:  They're based in Waterloo, but apparently their server is in Florida.  No Linux, no ssh, and minimum $12/month.  Other people offer Linux for as little as $2/month, but almost nobody dares to offer ssh (which would be suicidal for a Windows-based ISP to offer, due to lack of security).

But lo and behold!  HostMDS offers Linux, ssh, PHP+MySQL, hosting in Waterdown Ontario (at least it's in-province, but they claim it's in Toronto?), and only $6/month!!!  Their Terms of Service are reasonably clear ("A website is considered using 'Excessive amounts of resources' when it monopolizes the resources available using 10% or more of system resources for longer than 60 seconds.") although it seems wrong to me to mention "Canada" and "DMCA" in the same paragraph.  Sorry, Stephen Harper, nobody but you wants a DMCA here in Canada!

So I tried signing up for their basic starter "Unlimited" plan.  Things were going fine until I got to the page where it said "To protect against fraud, we will now call the phone number you gave.  Enter this PIN when prompted.  Click HERE to begin the call."  But it was 1 AM and I had sleeping children!  Today I managed to get the signup process restarted to the point where their computer did call me and I entered the PIN and also the voiceprint of my name, but the transaction still didn't go through because it had already been "cancelled".  I tried a complete do-over, but then it wouldn't give me the hostname I wanted because "this name is already in use at HostMDS; cancel your other website first" but the name isn't in use and it shows in my account as "cancelled; status FRAUD".

I sent email to their sales department, but it's the weekend and they probably won't reply until Monday.  And then Rosh Hashanah will be over.

So I had to think of yet another thing to do that wasn't paid work and wasn't 8 boring hours of chanting Hebrew in a synogogue.  I started cleaning out my email inbox.  I actually managed to get rid of 10% of the oldest entries (down to 371 now) before thinking of something else to do instead: write this post!

UPDATE Sunday 20 Sept.: Heard back from HostMDS sales.  The "fraudulent" signup evaporates after 24 hours.  So I signed up again and asked for a new phone call—which failed because Wifey was on the phone to her mother!  Oh well, guess I'll try again tomrrow.

I was daydreaming recently about attending the FurAffinity United convention (9-12 August 2007, Central NJ).  I imagined sitting in the lobby with my laptop, whistling for several hours until something decent finally came out.  Of course, that would never happen.  ("Creating a public disturbance", yadda yadda.)

Today I was reading Stephen Dubner's blogpost about Canada, which led me to Jessica Simpson, which led to Dolly Parton and also Talk:Jessica Simpson, which led to Whistle Register (a.k.a. flageolet).  Yes, I'll do anything to avoid paying work!

Anyway, the whistle-singing I used to do in college is not like "Mariah Carey hitting a C8 note".  It was much lower-pitched and more akin to ventriloquism: forming consonants with the back of my throat while the front made whistly noises.  A few times I tried switching from whistling to singing, but found that to make the same note the usual way required a complete rearrangement of my mouth parts.  Perhaps I could achieve that with practice.  Making the same whistle-note on inhale and exhale requires a rearrangement of mouth-parts, but I got that down pat years ago.