Monday, November 21, 2011 by Dick.

We used to call it our “privates” because we (allegedly) value our privacy and don’t want to show off our, well, junk.

Everybody in the known universe (except in Andromeda) knows that Facebook and privacy don’t mix well. Frankly, the Innernoodle and privacy don’t mix well but that’s another story. Facebook is >||< close to settling with the Federal Trade Commission after the FTC charged the social networking site with issues related to your privacy and mine. See, Facebook has access to a lot of our junk and they keep changing how they will display it.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg reminded PBS viewers that everything Facebook knows about us is everything we have put there. Other companies, he said, like Microsoft and Google and Yahoo, “have search engines and ad networks, have a huge amount of information about you. It’s just that they’re collecting that information about you behind your back really. But you never know that… it’s less transparent than what is happening at Facebook.”

I can keep my junk hidden from the Interwebs simply by not using the Interwebs. No Facebook. No Google. No online bill paying. No Netflix streaming.

Meanwhile, the bank known as Chase Manhattan until it merged with J.P. Morgan a decade ago, is one of the Big Four banks of the United States. I’ve been a Chase customer since I got my first “BankAmericard” in the late 1960s.

Chase sent me a privacy notice with a lot of little aptitude-test ovals to fill in completely. I’ve never been one to color inside the lines but I did my best. “We’re going to send you junk mail from these guys.” NO THANK YOU. “We’re going to bill you for these other guys.” NO THANK YOU. “We have this wonderful offer for …” NO THANK YOU.

I can keep my junk hidden from Chase as long as I send in the “opt-out” form. Every five years. Unless they ask for it more often. Like tomorrow.

The St. Albans Messenger reports that the village of Richford has become the first northwestern Vermont community to install law enforcement surveillance cameras on its streets; their two new cameras cost five grand (money that was to have underwritten a second constable). The live video feeds directly to the Sheriff’s Office via the Internet. U.S. Border Patrol and Vermont State Police also have access to the feed. The cameras were installed as a “safety measure” in response to concerns from residents about area crime but not all residents are happy about the cameras.

Richford officials remind us that Richford is not the first to have cameras trained on its streets. Public Access TV has cameras looking at the streets in both St. Albans and Enosburg, officials said. The fact is that those cameras were not installed at taxpayer expense and those cameras don’t feed Law Enforcement.

I can keep my junk hidden from Richford’s cameras as long as I …
Oh. Wait. I can’t keep my junk hidden from Richford’s cameras.

The World Naked Bike Ride got me thinking about this question I found online: “Imagine that you live in a place where public nudity is not only legal, but also socially acceptable. Assuming that the climate is favorable, how often would you be totally naked in public?”

In that case, I’d opt in to show off my junk.

Posted in Privacy, Sociology, Politics & News, Random Access | 1 Comment »

Monday, November 14, 2011 by Dick.

Burlington, VT (October 28)–Our own local group of Occupy Wall Streeters began a weekend encampment in City Hall Park in Burlington today, but it’s unclear whether they’ll be allowed to stay in the park overnight. Under city ordinances, people are forbidden from sleeping in parks after 10 p.m. or setting up tents and bedding for that purpose. The Vermont Workers’ Center, meanwhile, “encourages everyone to stop by with family and friends to celebrate the right to peaceably assemble and to exercise the right to free speech.”

It’s a real conflict. Most of Burlington’s city government is pretty much on the OWS side but there is a farmer’s market in the park on Saturday, so Occupy Wall Street is gonna end up Occupying Main Street and fouling local commerce.

“Real change can happen and it feels to me like it’s starting to simmer…” my friend Enola “Fanny” Guay said.

That may well be, but the issue still comes down to a single question: Do the protesters have a defined goal?

I was in college during the anti-war protests of the 60s. Looking back on my actual experience, there were a lot of different, non-homogenous groups running around but they all had one over-riding goal: they would shout and shout until the war came tumbling down.

I don’t remember any protesters shooting each other.

Burlington, VT (November 10)–Police are investigating three deaths — two fatal shootings and an apparent overdose — at or near Occupy protest camps last Thursday.

A young man was fatally shot Thursday evening just yards from the Occupy Oakland encampment outside City Hall. And a homeless veteran died after shooting himself in the head in a tent in Burlington’s City Hall Park, where the local Occupy movement has set up tentkeeping. Police here cordoned off part of the park as a crime scene sparking a confrontation with the protesters.

Also on Friday, a 42-year-old man was found dead inside his tent at Occupy Salt Lake City in Utah. Officials believe he died from a combination of drugs and carbon monoxide poisoning.

This sign is making the social network and email rounds.

“It’s obvious the sign maker and all the Facebook copycats are either blind to or unwilling to discuss the class advantages and good luck that bolstered their hard work,” Fanny Guay said.

That’s Fanny-speak for “we need to take away that advantage so no one can get ahead of anyone else.”

It’s particularly worrisome that most of the OWS simmering comes together that way. After all, most of Vermont’s flower children had liberal college educations that their parents provided. Many of Vermont’s flower children have grown up to accumulate the advantages and luck

And here in Vermont, it is mostly the children and children’s children of privilege who band together to protest.

All curmudgeonliness aside, OWS could be a good thing if they stay peaceful. Protesting our problems is an American tradition and Wall Streeters getting $100 million bonuses from tax money is a problem.

If the simmering does come together, the OWS might have something to shout and shout about, a cause that allows every man, woman, and child to live in an identical, government-owned house, with identical, government-provided healthcare, watching identical, government-programmed television. As long as everyone can have a television.

I wouldn’t bank on it.

For now? It seems like all noise and no tumbling. And it’s dying a blusterous death.

Posted in Banking, Sociology, Society, Politics & News, Random Access | 2 Comments »

Monday, October 10, 2011 by Dick.

Have a little whine with your cheese and crackers? I have mine right here:

Rufus is fond of believing he knows everything and that anything anyone else says is wrong. Period. Paragraph.

That’s healthy.

Except when the anyone else is, well, me.

Rufus particularly likes to dispute pronouncements on technology, on God, and on history. He insists, for example, that there’s no advantage to increasing the sensor size in a digital camera. Doesn’t matter that I’m a pretty knowledgeable daylight photographer. Doesn’t matter that most other digital camera experts agree with me. Doesn’t matter that large format film cameras have already won the “size” battle. Rufus knows better.

The most recent example comes from the very large (about 800 million population and growing) world of very small issues (Facebook). Our mutual friend Brock posted a note about why a cop should take a gun to a knife fight; I added an anecdote about the army adopting the .45 Colt after Philippine-American War. Brockley Mann is the chief of the South Puffin Police Department.

The “suspect’s momentum may continue forward with enough force for the edged weapon to end up injuring the officer” even after the suspect has been shot, Brock posted.

I recalled that the reason the army switched from a .38 to the Model 1911 Colt was to stop the Filipino Moros running full tilt (a “bolo rush”) with their 18″ machete-like swords at the officers who had only side-arms. Even a dead running man can decapitate a soldier on sheer momentum. Experiments showed the .45 caliber punch could almost stop that rush. Almost.

Unfortunately, the M1911 design wasn’t finished and it never saw service in the Philippines.

Rufus responded that he “thought the ’service .45′ was ALWAYS a .45 starting with the original Colt revolver. But you say the Army had a dalliance, for a time, with a little .38. How long did that last? (I could Google it, but YOU brought it up…)”

Let’s keep that thought. Rufus could Google it, but I brought it up…

Another poster commented, “I can’t imagine the Army using .38s. I have a .38 and it is really small.”

I might note that it’s not the size. OK, it’s the size.

Thanks to Liza Arden who spent the 30 seconds on Google that Rufus had no time to do, there is plenty of firearms history available:

• .45 Colt on Wikipedia
• The Legend of the Colt and the Moros
• Living with the 1911

I cited these examples not (just) to pick on Rufus. OK, maybe to pick on Rufus, but also to talk about how so few people are willing to reach out to the sources we have to store our history even when it is crucial.

You might have a problem reconciling your checking account and need to look for calculation tools. You might need to know when Louisville Slugger first produced a bat with a knob on it (Babe Ruth ordered the first one in 1919). You might have a leaking PVC sink drain and need to look for repair techniques.

I mostly enjoy researching, but I don’t enjoy doing your research. Or Rufus’.

Google Is Your Friend.

It was not always thus. I grew up before the Internet so I had to use the books in the house, the books in friend’s houses, the books in the library. Remember e-n-c-y-c-l-o-p-e-d-i-as? Me, too. I still have a Marks’ Handbook that I rarely use and a Machinery’s Handbook that I use all the time. Mine is the 18th Edition, printed in 1968, because tap drill hole sizes haven’t changed much in the intervening years. I don’t have the CD version but I do look up work gear temperatures online more often than in the Handbook. And I’m more likely to find the mechanical engineering facts, figures, standards, and practices of the Marks’ online. On the other hand, my favorite reference book here is the Oxford English Dictionary my folks gave me more than 30 years ago.

See, it doesn’t matter if you use an Internet search engine or the local library to find your answer. It just matters that you find the answer.

Of course, where ever one reads the data, there remains the small problem of remembering what you read.

(I found that 2010 essay by Googling.)

Posted in Writing, Sociology, Geekery, Random Access | 3 Comments »

Sunday, May 29, 2011 by Dick.

I’m not pregnant.

But I AM™ barefoot.

And despite all the photos to the contrary, I do not have a foot fetish.

But I certainly spend much of my time without shoes.

According to Wikipedia, “being barefoot is regarded as a human’s natural state, though for functional, fashion and social reasons footwear is worn, at least on some occasions.” Like when shoveling snow. “Many people do not wear footwear in their home and expect visitors to do the same.”

Perhaps it is a modern thing. Ötzi the Iceman had, well, shoes. And, of course, Errol Flynn died with his boots on.

Until the early 20th century, “the bare foot had been perceived as obscene, and no matter how determined barefoot dancers were to validate their art with reference to spiritual, artistic, historic, and organic concepts, barefoot dancing was inextricably linked in the public mind with indecency and sexual taboo.” Ruh oh. Salome shocked 1908 London with a barefoot dance of desire; Maud Allan became the lust object of the world.

Turns out I’m not alone.

Sandie Shaw was the Barefoot Pop Princess of the 1960s. Adele Coombs dreams of it. My hero Jimmy Buffett regularly performs barefoot. Deana Carter, Jewel, Patti LaBelle, Cyndi Lauper, Anne Murray (Anne Murray!), Linda Ronstadt, Shakira, and Ronnie Van Zant all have embraced freedom and splinters on stage.

According to the Society for Barefoot Living, neither OSHA nor state and local health departments require people to wear shoes in stores, restaurants, and other public places (the current regs apply to employees, not customers).

Say? Can I get some service over here?

Posted in About Me, Sociology, Random Access | 3 Comments »

Monday, February 21, 2011 by Dick.

Since I speak a creole originally from an island nation, I have an angle.

I took French in grades 7 and 8. My first teacher was Madame Volkenharrrrrrrrrrrrrr who spoke Frahnsh with a combination of rolled Rs and glottal stops. I can still count in French and curse a little but my seventh grade average was a C. I attained Ds the next year.

Sensing a bad trend, I switched to Latin in ninth grade.

That seemed like a wise choice. My mother took four years of Latin. My grandfather and grandmother took four years of Latin. You have to start in grade 9 to fit in four years of Latin. I really really wanted to do that.

My second year French teacher also taught first year Latin.

Uh oh.

Yeppers, I earned Ds in Latin.

Sensing a bad trend, I switched to Spanish in tenth grade.

Aced it. Senora Reagan even called me “Querido Ricardo” in my yearbook. Wrote a nice note there. I think she wished me good luck.

Spanish is a vital language in home life, business, culture and politics in South Puffin and even up north around Miami in the United States. The Miami Herald reports that “one might expect a good report card there when it comes to the quality of the Spanish being spoken.” But the reality that educators and linguists face every day is “an atrocious Spanglish”; they want to clean it up.

I have a better idea. Why don’t the Spanish speakers just learn English?

My friend Nola “Fanny” Guay bridled at that. “There’s no shame in pidgin languages and they help foster a sense of tribal belonging and community among those. It also fosters separateness, which is probably why ‘mericans and educators/linguists want to clean it up. Preferably they’d foster belonging to the fuller community,” she said.

Nope. The paper reported it correctly as Spanglish. Pidgin is a more simplified language that traders construct from pieces of their common languages plus some new words like finiptitude they make up to fill in the gaps. Most people learn a pidgin as a second or third language as they need it. The South Florida Spanglish, on the other hand, incorrectly uses actual Spanish words plus Spanish-sounding English cognates; they end up speaking badly, adopting bad habits from the shared tongue, and trying to keep what-they-think-is-Spanish as the master language.

So why don’t the Spanish speakers just learn good English?

“‘zackly,” Ms. Guay said. “It’s okay to have your own lingo. It’s better to know what the rest of the people around you are speaking, and to communicate with them clearly. Useful, you know.”

Perhaps those educators and linguists feel guilty about English dominance and want to further fragment American society. After all, America grew strong because people could love a country that accepted them and taught them its language and customs.

I called English a creole. Old English grew first as a pidgin as the islands assimilated the Iron Age Picts, Angles and Saxons and Gaels and Danes and Romans. It became a creole language when a generation of English children learned it as their first language and later became a mother tongue in its own right. It is still the most adaptable of languages, free to accept words and rules from other tongues.

And now we have to Press 1 to speak it.

I’m perfectly happy doing business with you in this country if your robotic auto-attend asks me politely to Press 1 for Spanish or French or Moonese. As long as the default selection is English.

Posted in Sociology, Society, Politics & News, PC, Random Access | 2 Comments »

Monday, January 24, 2011 by Dick.

In “real life,” the place we used to call “meatspace,” I chair a small regional arts council.

Over the years, we’ve hung a lot of art and presented a lot of concerts including the only stop the national Artrain ever made in Vermont; Artrain included works by Henry Casselli, Peter Hurd, Peter Max, Jamie Wyeth, and my friend Deborah Deschner from Vermont. We brought to the stage April Wine and 17 other bands in an all-day benefit we called Floodstock, held in the same site as the Grateful Dead concerts.

I know lots of artists. I know lots of musicians. Hundreds. Maybe thousands, but not as many as Mark Sustic. And I’ve strung cables on stage and lugged gear.

That’s why it surprised me that I didn’t recognize the gear in this Facebook conversation:

Great Female Vocalist (rock/pop/country singer-songwriter):
Last night the guts fell out of my Shure PG58. Dangit. Do any of you vocalists out there want to recommend your favorite mic for live performances? I’m in the market! Thanks!

Band Leader #1
EV N/DYM 767A

Supercharged Drummer:
Shure Beta 58

Supercharged Drummer:
Or a Sennheiser E935

House Rocker Drummer #2:
Well then… Put the guts back in… The little set screw most likely fell out or became loose.

Gypsy Singer-Guitarist:
Shure Beta 58 is what I use.

Great Female Vocalist:
Well, I’d heard from my sound man that he’d appreciate me getting a better mic so that he could make better adjustments. That’s why I’m looking for feedback. I always liked that mic, but I don’t have the sound man’s perspective.

House Rocker Drummer #2:
Shure SM58 Industry work horse. But I am old school …If all is adjusted correctly…there is no feedback.

Band Leader #2:
I like our Beta 87 A’s for live work. Check with [female vocalist]. She has a mic she swears by. I forget what it is though.

August Sound Engineer:
I absolutely love the AUDIX OM-6 and it’s great for female voices. Highly recommended… Same with the Shure Beta 87A of course. There’s lots that’ll work well for you and of course that depends on your budget too. Best idea is testing them with your own voice though ! Good luck

I know that Shure designed the legendary SM58™ vocal mic for professional vocal use in live performance, sound reinforcement, and studio recording. I even know what it looks like. But I have no idea which of these mics is right for our Great Female Vocalist or whether some other one not named would be even better.

I’m a pretty knowledgeable guy with a broad expertise. Want to devise an AI controlled pick-and-pack warehouse or just a pick-and-place machine? I’m your guy. Need a suspension consult for your hot rod? I’m your guy. Want to design a website to sell your artwork? I’m your guy. Need a landscape photo or an opinion printed in portrait? I’m your guy. I didn’t know that I didn’t know an answer to this. And unlike most 3rd or 4th graders and most politicians, I couldn’t simply make one up.

There are undoubtedly lots of other questions I had no idea that I know nothing about. Maybe as many as the number of musicians I’ve never met. Using that data point of one, I shall now generalize that there are issues in this wide world that our self-proclaimed pundits also have no idea they know nothing about. But soooooo many of these authorities will analyze, and philosophize, and sound off anyway.

Gotta be a lesson in there somewhere.

Posted in Newspaper "Science", Sociology, Media, Random Access | 2 Comments »