Focus on the Family says: Don't be homosexual, fondle our balls!

Focus on the Family has announced their plan to distribute 5000 "stress balls" during Thursday's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, each decorated with the URL of their website, a website devoted to "cures" for being gay. These balls are to be thrown into the crowd by FOTF flunkies.

Macy's has announced that since the parade will take place on public grounds, there is nothing they can do, a claim sure to be surprising to survivors of police and Republican Party tactics during the Republican National Convention.

The number of Macy's publicity department is 212-705-2434, ask for Anne Keating.
NYPD Community Affairs: 646-610-5323
NYPD Public Relations: 646-610-6700
The Mayor's Office can be reached at: 212-788-3000
The NYC Commission on Human Rights is at: 212-306-7500

And please do get as many of the FOTF balls as you can. Cut open and emptied, they may be almost as good as latex for any number of intimate activities. Should you happen to use those balls for such activities, please mail them back in their enhanced state to

FOTF
Focus On The Family
870 Robbie View,
Colorado Springs, CO
80920

This message brought to you as a public service from Diatribal.

2 large cloves of garlic, minced fine
1 2.5x2.5 cm piece of ginger, minced fine
Handful of fresh Thai basil leaves, shredded
1 small red hot pepper (Thai "demon pepper" type), chopped, with as few or as many of the seeds removed as you like OR 1 small spoonful chili-garlic sauce (sambal oelek, not Sriracha)
fresh ground black pepper, to taste
1 stalk lemongrass, chopped fine

Handful of Kaffir lime leaves, fresh or dried
6-12 bay leaves, dried
2 dried galangal slices
Juice of at least one lime
Curry powder to taste (I like Sharwood's)
Soy sauce, to taste
10 ml rice vinegar

sesame oil or your favourite stir-fry oil
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, partially frozen and sliced thin
15 ml brown sugar

Ad Hoc Thickener (in lieu of coconut milk)

1 small to medium potato, peeled and chopped
1 small onion, peeled and chopped
2 large cloves garlic, peeled and mashed
water to cover
brown sugar (approx 45 ml)

Start the thickener first - in a small saucepan, simmer first four ingredients until cooked. Then blend with a hand blender until the mixture becomes a thick and starchy liquid. Add the brown sugar while it is still hot, then stir well.

Soup
Combine first six ingredients in a small bowl. Then, in a large saucepan, stir-fry the chicken pieces in the oil until browned, then add the sugar to caramelise it. Add the spice mixture, then stir-fry for a few more minutes, or until aromatic. Add water as desired. Then add the next seven spice ingredients. Simmer for a few minutes, until flavours are blended. Then add the thickener. Stir well, and serve.

NB: Would be perfect with tomatillos or green beans, and perhaps fresh, thinly sliced mushrooms.

I'm rereading Robert Silverberg's peculiar novelization of Isaac Asimov's story "The Positronic Man," which I think appeared (also) as "The Bicentennial Man." An interesting subplot to the book is the protagonist's struggle to achieve legal recognition as a person in the broadest possible sense, although the protagonist is a robot known as "Andrew Martin." Andrew Martin, however, is a very unusual, capable robot, with quite humanlike capabilities -- and he wants to be considered human by legal definition, if nothing else.

Andrew Martin, in the course of the book, goes through numerous politcal and legal actions to try to gain rights for himself. By the midpoint of the book, Martin basically admits that he wants to be a human. Which brings me to wondering why the authors (I believe that Asimov and Silverberg may have worked on it collaboratively), in favour of Englightenment-style liberal and modern libertarian arguments for and against Andrew Martin's achieving legal parity with human beings, completely missed what seems to me to be the obvious argument, at least for getting their protagonist's robotic foot in the human-rights door:

If corporations can be legal persons, why not robots?

Corporations, like Asimov's robots, are effectively immortal, bound by principles every bit as rigid as the Three Laws of Robotics and the constraints of the positronic brain, and are supposedly in existence to serve human beings (but, like the protagonist in The Positronic Man, have taken on a life all their own, essentially manumitted from human control). So why not?

Is the book an analogy for this process? If so, what does the end of the novel say about it?

Here is a picture of the pumpkin I carved this Hallowe'en, mostly because I'm a maniac (and I was tired of my friend Chad having the geekiest pumpkin at the party).

Larger version here.

Hey there, Perfessors Interrobang and Multigeek here with very important, life-altering questions...

Are you getting enough borflnerb in your diet?

It's midnight. Do you know where your borflnerb are?

Are you borflnerb than you were four years ago?

Is our children borflnerb?

Are you borflnerb more now and enjoying it less?

Voulez-vous borflnerb avec moi ce soir?

Is your borflnerb big enough to satisfy your lover?

Are you a borflnerb today?

Are the Republicans undermining the nation's borflnerb?

Do you feel that borflnerb just isn't what it used to be in the old days?

Would you borfl a nerb in public? Would you regret it afterwards?

Do you like borflnerb and getting caught in the rain?

You've got chocolate in my borflnerb!

Hey, everyone. I am sticking my head out of the grave here to tell you that our dear Perfessor Multigeek, long absent from these here virtual parts, and fondly missed, will be visiting me starting at about 3PM tomorrow! Woo!

Of course, we're going to be working on project things, so we're not likely going to have a chance to do much online stuff, really, aside from research (and I do have about a hundred assignments to mark this week and next, gods spare us!), but I might convince him to pop in and say a few words. :)

He should be bringing me a (very antiquated) Mac for doing Reed&Wright stuff with, and probably various and sundry other goodies. I hope he doesn't show up with his suitcase crammed with stuff for me, and two pairs of socks and a pair of boxers crammed into his jacket pockets...

In other news, I'm still doing the perfessing gig myself, which seems to be going as well as possible. I do need to figure out what I'm going to talk about tomorrow in my (*groan*) 8AM class. Maybe we should all adjourn to the cafeteria. There isn't the wherewithal to do a "pub tutorial" at 8AM, as the campus bar is closed.

I was just mentioning to Tomble how Slashdot is still acting up for me (how come my new site, which is all CSS-driven, plays nicely with my browser, and Slashdot doesn't? Aside, of course, from where I b0rked the HTML and haven't gotten around to fixing it yet. BUSY!! Can it be that Alex Magill really is God?! He did the Nicest Business Cards Evar[TM] for me, by the way...). I said, "It still renders funny," which made me think, "You render funny, and your mother wears outdated boot sequences." Don't ask. My head's in a strange place these days.

Psychopathic fun for the whole family -- the Aim A Hurricane Game!

Try this at home, kids. There are multiple options to choose from, cheesily neat sound effects, and the graphics don't suck. Also, it's possible to arrange the high and low pressure systems and the hurricane starting point such that one can take out the entire Eastern Seaboard. *chortle*

There isn't any way to recreate Hurricane Hazel that I've found, though. What a pity...

__________

*previewy* Ugh! Loathe the new format -- it doesn't display right on my browser and it's too fucking wide for my screen rez. Also, sans-serif fonts suck. Thanks a lot, guys. Ever heard the saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"?! Yeah, ok, maybe that goes against the entire tinkerer-geek mindset, which seems to be an endless round of fixin' what ain't broke (you folks need to learn to leave well enough the hell alone), but still. Maximal suckage. The "Delete"/"Enable Comments" and stuff is right over the first line of my entry. Way to go...

(The first 2Perfessor joint.)

The Perfessor and I were talking about Hurricane Katrina and the reactions thereto, and I mentioned a telling comment that one of the CNN reporters had made, a Freudian slip of the worst order. The reporter was in the midst of the devastated zone, and said something like, "When we get back to the States..." Keith Olbermann also came out with the line "Somewhere, in the city of Louisiana," as though the US Gulf Coast were some sinking city-state, a drowned Singapore of the American imagination.

As with any event of significance, the human mind, and the creators of the prevailing narratives are looking for a conceptual space in which to fit that narrative. The abovementioned metaphor is one. A commenter on Effect Measure, a public-health blog, said, "The media is covering this like it's the Crimea."

Then there's Rustin and the Army Times. They've come up with a different metaphor, which we think works very well. Here's a passage from a well-known organisation (link later) that I'm going to present in an altered form, then link to the original, just so you can see the parallels:

[I]ntimidation of the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) interfered with the urgent task of feeding the hungry, and prolonged the agony of the innocent. It is misleading, therefore, to see the lawlessness and anarchy as the result simply of [disaster] and breakdown of authority. ... The [authorities] are self-serving, disingenuous and cynical when they pretend that "uncontrolled elements" are responsible for the acts of violence and intimidation that they themselves have directed and fomented.

Now go to this page, scroll down to the fifth paragraph, and think about that for a while.

I had an idea. We, as Canadians, have some collective sins to atone for (we'll get to some of the other ones later), one of which being the expulsion of the Acadians in 1755.

A Brief Historical Digression:: From the Centre Acadien --

The period between 1755 and 1762 was a very tragic time for Acadians for it was in those years that the British authorities decided to enforce the deportation order. Acadians were stripped of all their rights and placed on board over-crowded vessels bound for destinations unknown. The traumatic events were to scar deeply the Acadians people whose memory of deportation and exile lasted for generations to come. After the fall of Beauséjour in the spring of 1755, events progressed rapidly toward deportation

Since now, some 250 years later, many descendants of the Acadians now find themselves expelled from their second adoptive home and without any place to live, I think it would be at least fair to offer them the opportunity to return to the places we kicked them out of 250 years ago.

The benefits would be innumerable, for revitalising Acadian culture as it presently stands, for humanitarian aid, and for linguistic and cultural study.

I can't be the only one. Does anyone know anyone who's working on Acadian repatriation?

A week ago Friday, I submitted my resume to Fanshawe College, as they were apparently looking for instructors for their Continuing Education department, in either English or Technical Writing. (I thought, "I could do that!") On Sunday, I got an e-mail back from someone asking if I'd be interested in interviewing for a position teaching Business Communication in their day-school General Studies department. On Tuesday, I went for my interview. On Wednesday, I got the call saying that I'd been hired!

Thursday was two orientation meetings, Friday a departmental meeting.

I start teaching on Tuesday. EEEK!

Note on Terminology: In Canada, "college" refers to a >1 year, postsecondary, diploma-granting institution, as opposed to a "university," which is a 3- or 4-year, degree-granting institution.

Three coincidental things: One of the other new part-time hires is a guy with whom I went to high school, and one of the new full-time hires is a girl I was in classes with during grad school... In London, there are only 2.5 degrees of separation. Also, the Fanshawe College student paper is called the Interrobang... *grin*

All this folderol explains why I haven't been posting much lately...

There's a lengthy thread going on the TECHWR-L technical writers' list about using free and open source (FOSS) applications particularly for technical writers. While it seems that the field is shaping up nicely in terms of tools (this is gratifying to know, considering that I intend to set up an entire tech-writing kit on a Linux system), it still has some problems. This, you might say, is a plea from a non-developer user of FOSS to the development community, asking you to consider deliberate or incidental users of your applications. (An incidental user would be someone who works where FOSS tools are part of the development suite, but isn't a developer him- or herself, and may not have chosen to use those particular tools under different circumstances.)

Installation: This one gets mentioned over and over again in the TECHWR-L thread, and I myself have numerous horror stories of trying to get something-or-other to work. The crux of the problem seems to be that many FOSS developers assume that everyone else's machine is identical to their development and test environment(s), and so omit (and/or at times omit to mention) crucial external pieces required to run their software, such as DLLs, runtime environments, or codecs. Part of the problem here may also be that FOSS writers in general are kind of cliquey, and get so familiar with the insular world, that they don't realise that the vast majority of non-developer or incidental users don't have the required pieces. ("What do you mean you don't have the Pgrtzkl codec?! Everyone uses Pgrtzkl!")

For the record, I must point out that LPetrazickis' graciously added a DLL to the Slashdot Journal Grabber bundle when I asked him. Which brings me to my point: Don't assume that all your users will automatically have the same environment on their system as you have. If your program requires an external DLL, codec, or what-have-you, if you don't want to bundle it with the application download itself, at least notify your user base and link to a place where the user can get the missing pieces if required. (Case in point where the proprietary world has got it right -- most pages with PDF downloads also provide a link to download Acrobat Reader.)

Similarly, non-developer users like relatively pain-free installs. Of course, we don't always get them (*cough*FrameMaker*cough*), but most of us don't like to compile our own applications, for instance, or go through five installation steps. If you aren't willing to provide an executable of your program, or an installer for it, you probably aren't going to get many users outside of the developer community. This may be your goal, specifically, but it doesn't do much to promote the use of FOSS generally, if every FOSS developer writes strictly for people like themselves, that is, other FOSS developers. Which brings me to my next point...

Documentation and Support: Being a bunch of technical writers, the Techwhirlers are interested in documentation. Several list members complained that the documentation, for instance, for OpenOffice is terrible (I scanned it and found that it wasn't all that bad, albeit some of the nomenclature was peculiar). Personally, I've certainly noticed a lack of quality in documentation in FOSS, but then again, I've also noticed it with a lot of other software, too. My experiences with shareware developers are often the triumph of common sense (and good writing) over the general programmer mentality. The point being that users in general want documentation, for that one rare time when they might be tempted to consult the help file instead of contacting the developer for help. Another complaint that the Techwhirlers had, pursuant to the lack of (good) documentation, was that FOSS developers and/or support people tend to be a bit belligerent towards people looking for help. It isn't sufficient to tell your users to "RTFM" if the FM doesn't exist, doesn't cover all the features, is so badly written as to be incomprehensible, or is otherwise less than useful.

A Couple of Points to Ponder: Pursuant to my earlier points, FOSS developers might consider one of the following two things:

When developing your own documentation, don't do it solely from the perspective that you're the person who knows the most about the application, and therefore are in the best position to write the manuals. Think like a user. The user doesn't know as much about your application as you do; when he or she first opens it up, he or she knows next to nothing about it. So if you are indeed writing for end users (as opposed to writing for a programmer user audience, which is another thing), it's important to approach your documentation with a "beginner mind" mentality. In fact, if you are going to write your own documentation, take a few minutes to learn some basics of audience analysis. That way, your documentation will actually meet your users' needs instead of just being what you think is necessary and/or important. (Note to developers: Your changelog isn't actually something that most of your users care about. Tell people what your program is, what it does, and why they need it, not how often you've updated it, which oftentimes just smacks of programmer dicksizing.)

Secondly, if you can't do this for yourself, bite the bullet and find someone who has the time, the tools, and the skills to do it for you. There are lots of technical writers out there who would be interested in working on FOSS projects (*wave* *hint hint* *cough*), if only to get our names out and to build up a track record -- never mind those of us who actually believe in the philosophy behind FOSS -- that you can probably find someone to put together something acceptable for you.

That said, I have a few more things to say about coolness, and position relative to posturing.

Feature Cram and Coolness: Those of you familiar with the Jargon File have no doubt run into the term "feeping creaturism," and its more linear ancestor, creeping featurism. Far too much software these days -- open source, proprietary, shareware, and that thing you built one night in a fit of pique-cum-inspiration and now hack on when the fancy takes you -- tries to do too many things, and makes the Frankensteinian transition from workhorse to committee animal (that is, an animal built by committee). Then you get programs like, say, CorelDraw, where the interface simply has so much stuff on it, you're likely to suspect that you could get it to do your dishes, if only you knew the right combination of things to do. Contrast that with something like the old Armadillo, the shareware security application I worked on. It really didn't have much in the way of UI or additional features (so much so that screenshots were pretty unnecessary in the original manual), but it was a very good tool for the job. In short, a piece of software which does one thing well, absent million- dollar marketing and billionaire backing, will probably be more successful and well-liked by its users in the long term. Which brings me to a small comment about aesthetics...

The Naming of Parts: The recursive naming convention was cute. Really. The first couple dozen times, it was even sort of chuckleworthy. It's just gotten old. And many of you, thinking in typically hyperlinear engineer-fashion, have missed the most crucial element of it: semiotics. Yes, part of the fun of the recursive naming convention was that the silly recursive initialism actually spelled something that signified something. Later generations of highly literalistic programmer types, who wouldn't know a denotation from a signifier if it bit them on the ass, seem to be entirely too enamoured of meaningless initialisms. Case in point, to pick on Tomble a bit, because he's the only unilingual FOSS user I know (that I know of), his Jabber client is called "ayttm". I think that's absolutely emblematic of a large subset of FOSS nomenclature -- it's a meaningless, difficult to remember initialism that signifies something only to the developer. I still cannot remember the name of my old window manager under RH; it was something like tvwm. Instead of naming your program "All Y'all Type To Me" or "The Very-cool Window Manager" or something (doubtless that's more creative than the actual name) and abbreviating it to a cryptic string of letters, think of something creative to call your program. It doesn't have to be particularly wonderful, although evocativeness is nice (think about my previous example of a protection program called "Armadillo"), and failing that, try descriptiveness. Case in point, I suggested that Tomble call his hypothetical custom-built chat client "NaughtyChat," since isn't that what everyone does with IM anyway? *grin*

Summation Cum Laudanum: This is by no means an exhaustive list of the barriers to entry into FOSS for non-programmer users, but it does cover some of the major ones brought up by the Techwhirlers, and some of my own besides, generously sprinkled with the sort of wanton editorialising you've come to expect from me. I realise that people are going to completely misinterpret the intent of this essay and be all ready to flame me for being a Microsoft shill or something (ha!). No, I'm a Microsoft user because I'm a technical writer. We're a symbiotic lifeform with programmers, and the majority of software development still takes place on Windows, and the majority of paid tech writing gigs are likewise. That's not to say that I like being a Microsoft user; does anybody? Caveats aside, I have very little patience with religious zealotry one way or the other, especially in the face of pragmatic considerations like getting the job done and getting the bills paid. However, this is an essay on how I think serious proponents of FOSS should go about getting themselves and their software used by more people who fall across a broader cross-section of computer users in general. That's right, I'm trying to find ways to make FOSS more appealing to more people.

Once we've done that, there won't be quite so many responses like this one from Bruce Byfield on TECHWR-L:

Unless I know a tool very well, I do not want to recommend it. It's a personal risk, especially when I haven't been in a position very long, and it's a risk to the project, especially one with tight deadlines and budgets...Now: new project, new company, and I have to choose an authoring tool to create help. My first choice was the industry leader...To be candid, I could have selected [the industry standard] and nobody would have blamed me if it didn't work - just as nobody will congratulate me if the software I choose does work. However, you can be damn sure I would be in for it if the non-industry-standard tool I selected caused project problems.

Build a track record, and they will come. To build a track record, you need to have a good, solid, attractive product. To have a good, solid attractive product, well...

Coincidentally enough, given the topic of my last JE (steaming away at 27 comments as I write this), Rustin and I were talking about the NCL conspiracy which eventually led to the destruction of streetcar lines continent-wide (when they tore up the streetcar tracks here in London, they claimed it was so that they could use the metal for the war effort), and Rustin asked me if I'd be able to put together 3000 words on it or so for a pocket guide. I said that oughtn't to be a problem.

Then Rustin told me he was going out to a function at ABC No Rio, so after I took some notes on the new project and various other Reed&Wright-related things to discuss with my business advisor, he hung up the phone and I went on with my day, such as it was.

Around 9:30 or so, the phone rang, and it was Rustin, calling with some happy tales from ABC No Rio and some further updates on the new streetcar project. He told me about talking with Don Goede from Soft Skull Press, and various other people who were there at the (almost entirely not-Rustin-safe) barbecue, then said, "By the way, I just thought I should tell you, Don wants the proofs of the book by early next spring." I said, "What?!" and he laughed. I said, "Hold on, rewind!" and he laughed and repeated, "I just thought you'd like to know that the deadline's been firmed up a bit." I said, "You p...you p...you pitched the..." and he said "Yeah, he really wants to see it!" I fumfuhed for a while, going "Ebbeh...uhbuh..." and stuff, and Rustin helpfully said, "I think the word you're looking for is 'wibble.'"

So. It looks like I'm going to be writing a book...

Shit. Does this mean I'm an actual historian now?


___________

In other mostly unrelated news, you can download masses of raw information on the WTC destruction from the New York Times website, including audio files of emergency dispatch (horrifyingly addictive listening, btw), text transcripts, interviews, and oral histories.

*(91.3 cents/litre)

Since I've been in a fairly cranky mood lately, I'm getting a little annoyed with Americans griping about high gas prices. Their gas prices are hovering right around $2/gallon, and they think they've got it bad.

Pre-emptive Aside: Before anyone gets literalistic on me and posts a comment to the effect of, "But Interrobang, $3.53 Canadian is only $2.82 US..." let me remind you about the folly of working exchange rates on home-currency transactions. That is, if I buy gasoline here in Canada using Canadian dollars, and I want to compare that cost to someone buying gasoline in the US, using US dollars, I need to be looking at relative buying power, and not at the exchange rate. In which case, the ratio is close to 1:1.

Even I, the non-driver, am starting to notice the impact of rising fuel costs. Seems like I can't go to the grocery store anymore without spending $30-50, and, while I'm not living on lentils and rice to save money, I'm not exactly dining al fresco on champagne and caviar, either. (Yick, on both counts.) In general, I buy a lot of ingredients and unprocessed foods (the screed about every damn packaged meal having milk products in it is elsewhere, I think), or semi-processed foods, like canned beans and tomatoes and stuff.

Nevertheless, my food bill has increased by about half in the last couple of years, and I'm starting to notice understocking and shortages. I've also heard of shortages hitting other industries (this one in particular worries me). As Perfessor Multigeek would say, "It's definitely happening."

I think the time to contract our lifestyles somewhat is definitely upon us. It's about time we collectively started to adjust our manner of living, voluntarily, before we get reamed by a huge, involuntary shift and collapse. I'm not, at the moment, tremendously confident that the shift and collapse won't happen, but I think if we've collectively adjusted our lifestyles a bit to compensate for rising fuel prices, it'd hit us less hard.

Some things we can do are:

Walk, bike, bus, and train more, and drive less;

Live closer to our workplaces (I've got this one nailed; I work from home);

Start gardening in a marginally useful way (even Perfessor Multigeek, who lives in a Manhattan apartment, manages this, so those of us who actually have backyards and stuff need to get off our asses);

Invest in some way (money, time, sweat equity) in alternative energy;

Buy locally, wherever possible.

Of course, it would be really, really easy to make this switchover completely if we all had $100K/a in income, access to a nearly-infinite amount of resources, and so on, but this isn't a zero-sum game. Even small adjustments will make a big difference in the long term.

Tangential Note: Given the link above, those of you who are considering emigration had better decide within about the next five to ten years or so, and either go, or stay, because I suspect travel is going to become much more difficult and expensive. That said, if you are one of those people who really wants to see distant, faraway places, now's the time...

Constant Readers, I am in mourning. For the last eight years, I've gone to the Pennsic War for the first two whole weeks of August. This year, due to being in the Small Business Development course, and being paid grant monies to be here and develop my business (such as it is), I'm not going this year. On the other hand, I'm not exactly being philosophical about it. It's bumming me out incredibly.

Since I'm not going to be at Pennsic this year, unless some miracle appears between then and now, I've sent a blank book with Myfanwy for people to write messages in. Thanks to my friend Maugorn for the idea. The book will be residing primarily at House of the Three Roses, E13, for those of you who want to leave me a message and sympathy.