Larry Craig trying to play pass the potato has finally crystallized the answer to a question that has been floating around the back of my head for many years now. Why do so many social conservatives believe that being gay is a choice?

ANSWER: because for them, it really is a choice.

Way back in college I completed most of a minor in Psychology (then transferred schools and did most of a minor in CS, then decided to just graduate rather than finish either, but I digress). The key point my favorite Psych professor stressed about sex was that orientation is not a boolean toggle. It's a continuous set, bimodally distributed with a large hump near the hetero end, a smaller one on the far side, and a non-zero curve joining the two. (FWIW, I express this mathematically because that was my major; she taught it with friendly illustrations).

For most of us, preference is just a hard-coded trait. We might feel an outlier twinge once in a while, but it's not enough to act upon or even worry about. But imagine what it's like for folks toward the middle of the spectrum, who find themselves attracted to both genders on a recurring basis. Among the Reality-Based Community, such a person might accept being bi and have a good time. However, for someone whose gut tells them that devout belief supersedes pesky facts, wow, this is a serious problem!

And so we end up with hundreds of these conflicted souls entering politics, publicly proclaiming their choice of heterosexuality, while covertly looking for cock in bathroom stalls. Almost makes me feel sorry for them. Almost.

While browsing for disinformative comments to downmod, I came across this likely candidate.

Take a casual glance at http://www.google.com/search?q=canada+nickel+dead-zone+nasa and you'll see the obvious fingerprints of a dittohead smear campaign. However, the question is ... is it false or not?

My searches didn't find any factual reports about nickel mines in Canada; either the story doesn't exist or it's completely overshadowed by the turd blossoms. Anyone else have better sources?

So here we are, four months into the first year of Apple Inc, and they are living up to the name change. I didn't realize the utter non-extent of it until I opened the latest version of MacTracker, clicked 2007 in the Timeline, and found exactly THREE entries:

1. AirPort Extreme (802.11n)
2. Apple TV
3. Mac Pro (8-core)

That's the complete list of product revisions since last year. Not even an iPod Gig-bump or an inch of display. Exactly one Mac update that's only of use to a handful of high-end pro artists. Meanwhile, Centrino Duo is here, and everyone else's models are zooming ahead. Several of them offer internal cameras now, BTW.

There hasn't been a year with this few announcements since ... hmm ... 1998. Lord Steve really believes iPhone is going to be as big a hit as iMac and iPod were. Dammit, I don't care about that, gimme my MacBook Santa Rosa!

Apropos of nothing: My kids love those repetetive decrementing-verse songs, so I hear them way too much. This variation has been going through my head for a while, and I felt like sharing:

Five little monkeys jumping on the bed,
one fell off and bumped his head,
mother called the doctor and the doctor said,
no more monkeys jumping on the bed!

Four little monkeys jumping on the bed,
one fell off and bumped her head,
mother called the doctor and the doctor said,
are your monkeys jumping on the bed?

Three little monkeys jumping on the bed,
one fell off and bumped his head,
mother called the doctor and the doctor says,
I'm reporting you to Social Services!

Two little monkeys jumping on the bed,
one fell off and bumped her head,
doctor called the copper and the copper said,
no more mother jumping on her kids!

One mother monkey in a jail house bed,
slapped around by her cell mate 'Ed',
mother called the doctor and the doctor said,
no more monkeys jumping on the bed!

Ever since the first story about kidnapper/astronaut Lisa Nowak, I've had this gnawing Deja Vu. Her enigmatic mugshot just kept on reminding me of... someone. Disheveled brown hair, bleary eyes, je ne sais quoi... who was she? Actress? Long-ago girlfriend? Who?

Yesterday, at long last, it hit me. That picture is a many-years-older... more-strung out... Ellen Feiss!!! C'mon, try to tell me you don't see it too. A few quick searches didn't turn up anyone else mentioning this resemblance. You heard it here first; pass the word.

My organization just rolled out its new site design (which includes a good chunk of moved pages), and I just upgraded my copy of Danny Goodman's _Dynamic HTML_ to 3rd edition ("updated for Ajax and Web 2.0"). So I quickly realized we should have an AJAX script on our 404 pages. Parse the given URL, apply some heuristics, test a half-dozen candidate addresses, forward user to the best match.

Except that somehow I haven't found any prebuilt libraries for this. It *is* an obvious idea, right? I suppose I'll roll my own if necessary, but a system like this really ought to exist already. And I absolutely agree with Douglas Karr that the grandmasters at Google are blatantly falling down on the job by not catching their 404s more effectively.

I renewed my phone contract today; I finally have one with a camera. It also has a USB port for syncing with computers... which is disabled by Verizon (but of course they will transfer our files over their network for a low low fee).

I see various gray market entities selling unlocker software. Anyone care to share their experiences with this sort of thing? Where are good places to find phone hacks? What do they typically add/change? What do phone companies do to detect/deter/destroy unlocking? etc? Any helpful pointers would be appreciated.

My efficient (but not trusty) Golf TDI went to the shop yesterday for brakes and a timing whatever, so the dealership gave me a loaner. I turned on the radio and saw that the buttons were set to a mix of "christian" talk and pop "music". I say music in quotes because, well, have you tried listening to any of these stations during rush hour? There is no music. Their various corporate owners (aka Clear Channel) uniformly decree that in order to save on royalty payments, there should not be any actual music played at peak traffic times. (This is true, BTW).

With my faith restored in the utter idiocy of western consumer culture and its "human" populace, I quickly reset 5 buttons to my standard list:

1. WYPR, Baltimore NPR
2. WAMU, Washington NPR
3. WTMD, College Alternative
4. WBJC, Public Classical
5. WRNR, Indie Rock, sadly low wattage

This effort reminded me how thoroughly disgusting it is that I can only find 5 significant options in a fully saturated double-metro-area radio market. I decided then that I absolutely MUST find a home channel for the elusive sixth button. It used to belong to WHFS (formerly Indie Rock, then conglomerated, lobotomized, replaced by Spanish-language Pop/Dance, last brought back on another frequency as a zombie imititation of its former life), but I ended up realizing that inter-channel static was more enjoyable. The Seek button in the loaner car is large enough that I could press it easily without looking, so I spent my morning commute surfing for one more station preferable to pounding my forehead with a hammer.

I had expected to write this journal in the negative, assuming my mission would fail. But it seems my Reverse Murphy effect struck again, because a plausible candidate went on air LAST WEEK. Apparently a corporate drone had a lightbulb moment... a compact fluorescent one, in fact. Apologies to all the classic rock fans whose beloved Arrow has been smashed, but I'm giving this new "green rock" format a chance. If their morning DJs don't blather at me like schizophrenic meth-addicted Stern wannabes, I think we'll get along pretty well.

At an office luncheon last week, one of my colleagues asked our table a hypothetical question: "If you had a round-trip ticket on a time machine, when/where would you go and how long would you stay"? I was able to answer immediately "given sufficient preparation time, about 3000 years ago, probably North America, for about 30 years"(*). This topic (minus the return trip) has been a sporadic pondering of mine for a long while.

One of the smaller details I mentioned was an Esperanto dictionary using a 32 character phonetic alphabet, which was greeted with a mix of laughter and appreciation. That night the idea wouldn't let go of me, so I finally decided to formalize what characters it would have. And since I went through the trouble, I may as well put them up. With apologies to IPA and other professionally generated charsets, here they are.

1. a = short a, bat
2. â = long a, bait
3. e = short e, bet
4. ê = long e, beat
5. o = short o, bot
6. ô = long o, boat
7. u = short u, but
8. û = u-ish, boot, dude
9. i = short i, bit (btw long-i is actually aê)
10. ü = o/u-ish?, book, put
11. l = l
12. m = m
13. n = n
14. q = ng, bang
15. w = hard w, wet
16. y = hard y, yet
17. p = p
18. c = sh, she
19. t = t
20. f = f
21. k = k
22. h = h
23. s = s
24. x = aspirated th, thin
25. b = b
26. j = zh, asia (btw old-j/soft-g is actually dzh)
27. d = d
28. v = v
29. g = hard g, get
30. r = r
31. z = z
32. ð = voiced th, this

Actually, I'd replace several of those symbols with clearer, simpler shapes (similar to Graffiti), but this list is good enough for a beta version. Astute readers will notice the correspondence between chars 17-24 and 25-32.

(*) = without preparation, I'd go to Philadelphia circa 1750 for a week, and teach Ben Franklin the general principles of the periodic table, ideal gas law, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, motors, generators, cellular biology, germ theory, antibiotics, vaccines, genetic inheritance, formal logic, approval voting, balance of powers, ways to phrase a Constitution more clearly, assembly lines, and percussion-cap rifles. I'd also give him my alphabet of course.

I guess this is what happens when I don't read Slashdot religiously on Sunday afternoons.

96% of the 200+ high-karma posts in that discussion completely missed the key points. For your reference, they are:

1. Every Macintel with up-to-date firmware (100% cost-free) is ALREADY ABLE to boot Windows (thanks to EFI legacy support). BootCamp offers no advantage here. None.
2. BootCamp's second feature is a live HD partition resizing utility. There are several other tools which can do this, most of them free. BootCamp's only advantage here is its friendly GUI.
3. BootCamp's third feature is an aqua-colored button which will restart your Mac and launch the Windows installer disc. It saves you from having to click "Restart" and hold a couple keys during the boot sequence. Woo hoo, look how excited I am.
4. BootCamp's final feature is an ISO of Windows drivers for Mac hardware (GPU, iSight, etc) and a couple control panels (Startup Disk and a mouse button emulator). THESE ARE THE ONLY ITEMS POTENTIALLY WORTH PAYING FOR. However, the disc image will be widely available on P2P and download sites within hours of Leopard hitting store shelves.

End of story.

L and I did the classic dinner and a movie on Saturday. Due to the huge crowds we needed to buy tickets before dinner; however, due to a potentially flaky dinner schedule we couldn't be sure if we'd make it to the 7:20 show of The Fountain. So instead we bought tickets to Casino Royale at 7:45, which was more likely to be sold out, and if we finished dinner early enough we'd theater-hop back to The Fountain. This is a classic reverse-Murphy approach for us: assume that the thing that could go wrong, will, then plan accordingly and it won't.

As expected, we did make it to the 7:20 show. Independently we both felt guilty for our ticket choice; Aronofsky wasn't getting his well-earned share of our $19. So to balance the Karmic scales, we request for people to go see The Fountain. Or better yet, if you're in a conventional action mood, buy tickets to The Fountain and see Casino Royale instead.

If you liked Pi (seen, very weird and good) or Requiem (haven't seen, but heard similar) then you'll like The Fountain. It turned out to be almost exactly what I expected: a quirky philosophical mind trip much like Pi, with polish and maturity replacing the raw energy of Aronofsky's youth (and with the night sky over Guatemala replacing the robot). Hugh Jackman does a whole LOT of crying. Excellent date movie if you and the SO enjoy indie flicks with high production values.

• crude oil prices
• retail gasoline prices (bonus points for regular/premium/diesel split)
• retail consumption volume (bonus points as above)

with monthly (or weekly, or daily) data from 1998 (or earlier) through 2006? I'm pretty sure gas prices did not swing this much last year, and it's undeniable that lower prices (whatever the cause) benefit the incumbents.

My dear mother, who is kind-hearted to a fault and a genuinely pro-life (literally wouldn't hurt a fly) Democrat, is thoroughly enraptured with the notion of Obama 2008. Thousands (heading towards millions) of other folks apparently feel the same way. So I posed a very simple request: name one thing that Obama has accomplished in public service (other than the tautology of getting elected). Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Come on, maybe he could run in 2020, 2016, or even 2012, but 2008? The best I can say about present-day Barack is that he probably would be a better choice than Hillary, and if praise were any fainter it would fall below the Heisenberg limit. Sheesh, the Hillaristas are even crazier than the Obamites. She couldn't beat Dennis Hastert (for example) even if we found IM transcripts of him having group chat with Foley, a page, and the NewYorker dog.

If there isn't a MacBook 64 in my local Apple Store by the end of October, then I may as well give up and not buy one until spring. The feature set in Santa Rosa (800 dynamic FSB, 802.11abgn/16, Robson caching, lower wattage, etc) is really appealing, and its only drawback was having to wait for it until March or April when I could buy a MeromBook in July... in August... in September... in October...

Argh. So it goes. And now for something completely different:

With Usenet fading away, I realize that I no longer have a reliable fount for non-technical domain knowledge. What web sites do you folks turn to when you have a fairly specific question (about pop culture, household items, and other non-Slashdot topics) that can't be expressed in a single Google search?

FWIW, in this particular case I want a semi-comprehensive song list of cross-genre duets with a good beat. For example, "I'm Free" by Soup Dragons & Junior Reid, "Justified and Ancient" by KLF & Tammy Wynette, etc.