Crazy people who are 'electro-sensitive'

The Sebastopol City Council decided, amazingly enough, not to oppose a wireless technology and voted _not_ to oppose PG&E's smart meters.

A person who I greatly respect, a person who helped me a great deal during a hard time, wrote a letter to the editor of the Sonoma West paper in which he was against the council's actions. It was titled 'Cowardly Council.'

This is a recapitulation of the previous decision in which the council voted to reject free WiFi offered by Sonic.net because of 'electro-sensitivity.'

Rather than remain silent, I wrote my own letter to the editor.

Read on...or simply accept that I think the opponents to WiFi are dangerous cranks.

There was a young man from Eugene, and a Golden Kleene.

The Golden Kleene
There was a young man named Kleene
Who invented a fucking machine.
Concave or convex,
It fit either sex,
And was remarkably easy to clean!

(limerick, attributed to John von Neumann)


In any event, it is also the name of the prize from Arse (not _ars_) Elektronika. And Rosie and I shockingly won a Golden Kleene.

This is cool.

But the limerick as I heard it was:

There was a young man from Eugene
Who invented a fucking machine.
Concave or convex
it could serve either sex
And play with itself in between

And I heard it attributed to my birth father, Dick Gale, from his high school or college days.

Puppy Mill of death.

My daughter bought a puppy from a horrible puppy mill, WALABS, 3363C Centralia Alpha Rd
Onalaska, WA 98570

This breeder sold my adult daughter a puppy which according to his records was underweight and failing to thrive.

The puppy died 6 days after getting home - after a horrible day of being at the Vet and my daughter spending $600 or more in vet bills.

At the end of the day Molly had to drive an hour and a half to the state vet lab in Corvalis, with her beloved dead puppy in the back seat, in order to get it tested for rabies.

This happened a week before Molly graduated from College.

But then it gets worse, this horrible breeder has now chased my daughter and her reviews off of the internet, even getting Yelp to 'filter' her review.

Here is her Yelp review, which Yelp chose to 'filter.'

Here is the Yelp page for the breeder.

This is a Labrador dog breeder who I would discourage anyone from buying a puppy from. The puppy we got there was only 5 lbs at 9 weeks of age, and died one week after I picked her up. The breeder, Jim Young, was hostile and unsympathetic of the situation even after it was apparent from talking to the vets that tried to save my puppy's life that the cause of her death was likely related to his breeding program. He did not even offer an apology, yet alone refund any of my money or offer me another puppy. Also, after posting on the forum that my puppy was sick, and that other new owners should watch out just in case, he deleted my comment, and blocked me from the forum. I received emails from other people who had gotten his puppies only to have to deal with incredibly sick dogs. The breeder is a nasty mean person to deal with, and should not be around animals yet alone breeding them. He is only one step removed from a puppy mill.

Sara Winge really is awesome

Quinn Norton writes about O'Reilly's Sara Winge.

There are a lot of people at O'Reilly who do incredible things, but Sara is very high on the short list of coolest people at O'Reilly.

Censorship and control is annoying.

I sent the following item to 'class list' for my son's class. The 'class list' is a cc of everyone's emails.

--
"California and the Bay Area is currently experiencing an outbreak of Whooping Cough. So far five babies in California, all under four months, have died from it.

Immunity, even for vaccinated kids, and those who have had Whooping Cough before, wears off with time. For vaccinated kids immunity is pretty much worn off by high school, perhaps before, and we have a large reservoir of unvaccinated and under vaccinated people in our school community.

The tDap/dTap vaccine against Diptheria, Pertussis (Whooping Couch), and Tetanus
and is licensed for use in adolescents ages 10 to 19."
--

It seemed pretty benign to me. But the teacher promptly admonished me. "Please don't use the class email list unless clearing it with me first. "

Sorry, but you don't get to control speech. You especially don't get to control speech involving actual threats to our children created by the nutcase anti-vaccination crazies in the community.

This is the teacher who told me on another instance, 'what did you expect sending your child to an anti-technology school.'

I talked with the principal today, who refused to answer the question if the school was 'anti-technology.' But did say that the school has no policy on vaccinations.

70% of the kindergarten has 'vaccination waivers' - which is a pretty clear statement that the school certainly does have a 'policy' on vaccinations, that the policy is to accept the creation of a dangerous cesspit of infection and put our children in the middle of it.

D-RATS Gigapans

I just got to go to Arizona for two days of Gigapanning Volcanos and Lava flows for this years 'D-RATS' tests.

This is NASA's 'Desert Research and Technology Studies' tests. See the wikipedia article on them.

My gigapans of the test are all tagged 'd-rats-2010' - but so are some other gigapans, so do a search for the d-rats-2010 tag sorted by date.

Brian Monteleone, a Post Doc from ASU, drove up and we spent Sunday night planning our assault, and Monday and Tuesday gigapanning.

The first day was the windiest Brian has ever experienced while doing field work. My netbook was pulled out of my hands by the wind _twice_ (once is an accident, twice just carelessness?)

Chile a long time ago

Today is Feburary 4th, 2010. I have some dates seared into my memory. And other dates which turn out to be a little less 'seared.'

I sort of think that Feb 4th, 1980, was the date I arrived in Chile for my year's exchange with AFS. But now I am a little fuzzy on the exact date.

Memory and all. Sort of funny. But it was pretty close to Feb 4th, so 30 years ago - about.

Ten years ago I had this thought that it would be interesting to transcribe my hand written journals, on the 20th anniversary. Maybe even do it day by day - transcribe a day each day. Relive the year over a year.

But goodness, that seems, well, discursive? Distracting? Painful?

But in any event, thirty years ago I was an exchange student. And suddenly it is now.