School closings and restructurings naturally bring out the worst impulses in people. The desire to protect and preserve the familiar, even if it is somehow not to standard, is a strong one – who are these outsiders to judge our school? Our community? Are all schools being subjected to equally applied scrutiny?
Well, in the current round of proposed Seattle school closures, a lot of people feel that the answer is no, standards are being unevenly applied. Many of the proposed changes appear to disproportionately affect minority neighborhoods. They also appeared to target city-wide, alternative schools, such as The Boy’s.
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Posted by protected static as politics, random at 9:58 PM UTC
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200 years ago today, Edgar Allan Poe was born.
(h/t to Evil Mommy for reminding me…)
Posted by protected static as cultcha, poetry at 9:20 PM UTC
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Of all the weapons we’ve ever come up with, poison gas has to be one of the more horrific. It isn’t terribly effective as a weapon (too hard to control, too easy to protect oneself against, difficult to apply in concentrations needed to be effective) other than as a means of slowing down an enemy, or otherwise denying them easy access to part of the battlefield. But for those caught by it unprepared, the experience is ghastly:
this vision of a man-made Hell:
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
Experiences like this easily led to poison gas quickly becoming a symbol of impersonal, industrial warfare along with the machine gun.
Given this history, I was surprised to read today that poison gas was not first used as a weapon in the trench warfare of 1915. It was the product of trench warfare, but from a distinctly pre-industrial era. Like, 3AD pre-industrial. And the first victims were the Romans:
Ancient Persians were the first to use chemical warfare against their enemies, a study has suggested.
A UK researcher said he found evidence that the Persian Empire used poisonous gases on the Roman city of Dura, Eastern Syria, in the 3rd Century AD.
The theory is based on the discovery of remains of about 20 Roman soldiers found at the base of the city wall.
[...]
The study shows that the Persians dug a mine underneath the wall in order to enter the city.
They also ignited bitumen and sulphur crystals to produce dense poisonous gases, suggested Simon James, an archaeologist at the University of Leicester.
[...]
“The Roman assault party was unconscious in seconds, dead in minutes[," said Dr James. ]
Damn. Viciously resourceful little primates, aren’t we?
Posted by protected static as random at 7:53 PM UTC
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Have you ever had one of those moments when you had a core belief challenged? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by protected static as random at 5:01 PM UTC
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You are Number Six.
Patrick McGoohan died Tuesday at the age of 80.
No word on whether or not a bouncing latex ball was seen leaving the scene.
Posted by protected static as ephemera, media, random at 12:11 PM UTC
1 Comment »
Behold the moral vacuity of our chattering classes:
The issue of torture is more complicated than it seems.
No. It isn’t complicated in the slightest. A statement this wrong doesn’t deserve a logical rebuttal. It only deserves scorn, mockery, and opprobrium. So fuck you, Newsweek. Fuck you, Stuart Taylor Jr. Fuck you, Evan Thomas. And the biggest fuck you goes out to the editors who decided that this abomination deserved to be the cover story.
Posted by protected static as politics at 10:09 AM UTC
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Hats, that is. Not rings…
Recently, I was asked to provide a specification and estimate for a project at work. I’m not a software architect, so I’m having a hard time with some aspects of the spec – I think I know what we should be doing, and I think I have a grasp on best practices for what we’re trying to do, but I don’t know for sure… And estimates? Forget it. Remember how Scotty lets McCoy in on his little secret of multiplying everything by three so he’s always done early and looks like a genius? Yeah. I appear to have a knack for dividing by three and using that for my number.
So I picked up a book and started to read. How I spent my Christmas Vacation…
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Posted by protected static as programming at 11:05 PM UTC
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So I’m test-driving NDepend, and I find the following, um… non-standard keyboard shortcut:
My inner 12-year-old was amused all out of proportion and promptly posted a screenshot @ The Daily WTF.
(The funny thing is that this isn’t exactly no-name software… It’s in use in many large .NET shops to monitor code quality. I reported the bug and got an email back from the lead programmer/company owner in under an hour. He’s fixed it for the next release, and seemed kind of surprised that no one had brought it to his attention since it’s been there for months.)
Posted by protected static as programming at 6:20 PM UTC
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