Street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm

Yes, this one is just for me.

2008-03-26T19:03:00Z

moar funny pictures

Another last.fm station

2008-03-15T15:10:05Z

Today: Music to feed Ari by!

I'm serious. The little dude really seems to like Belle & Sebastian (and similar artists).

Discovery of the day

2008-03-12T19:09:48Z

D. Knuth and W. Wood, "The Potzrebie system of weights and measures," Mad Magazine, vol. 1, no. 33, pp. 36, June 1957.

CiteULike entry

No one will be seated during the breathtaking "watching TV" sequence

2008-03-06T17:01:10Z

The most mindblowing article I've read this week (yes, moreso than SRFI 71) is an article in Variety. It's about a movie in early development, which means it's likely never to happen, but still. Apparently, Fox Studios has acquired the rights to and is planning to make a movie based on...

...The Sims. The video game. Yes, THAT video game. And why not? There are so many reasons it'll make a great film!

* Compelling characters: the down-to-earth charm of Bob Newbie, the mystery of the Goth family, the... actually, there are no other pre-made characters, all the rest are created, described and developed by the player.

* Gripping plot: Who could forget that moment in the game when August McDoodlesmacker took ninety minutes to get from the living room to the kitchen and then passed out from exhaustion? Or when Gertie Underblupperson spent three hundred simoleons on an objet d'art only to discover that it was hideously ugly?

* Dramatic conflict: Gunther McDoodlesmacker wants to use the toilet, but can't because of the presence of August, who is inexplicably holding a conversation with Cynthia Glamrockstar in the bathroom. Will August and Cynthia take their discussion of the weather, skiing and banking elsewhere? Will Gunther wind up pissing himself?

So, yeah, I'm totally looking forward to it, especially since the script will be written by the guy who wrote "Scary Movie 3."

The Wire why not.

2008-03-04T02:25:24Z

Allison and I recently got into The Wire. Thank you, Netflix! We've seen all of season 1 and four episodes of season 2. It's remarkable to me that, despite people calling it the best show on TV, it may well be the best show on TV. Some things about that:

* For the first season, everything was spot-on: the directing, the acting, the writing, everything. The second season, not so much. Like, there was a noticeable quality drop between the last episode of the first season and the first episode of the second season. It's getting better, though.
* It's a rare show whose comic relief involves police brutality, but there it is.
* The show is confusing, but not because of the slang, which is pretty easy to pick up. It's the narrative structure, which is light on the exposition, and the camera work, which doesn't make it easy to distinguish characters. If it weren't for Television Without Pity, I'd be even more lost than I am now.
* How does a show with a majority black cast still manage to have a magical negro?
* I don't care nearly as much about the dock workers as I did the Barksdalies. And I could do without seeing so much of Ziggy's penis, thank you very much.
* Maybe my favorite dialogue, so far:

Bodie: Think the man got paid? Wallace: Who? Bodie: Man who invented these [Chicken McNuggets]. Wallace: Shit, he richer than a motherfucker. D’Angelo: Why? You think he get a percentage? Wallace: Why not? D’Angelo: Nigga please, the man who invented them things just some sad ass down at the basement of McDonald’s, thinking up some shit to make some money for the real players. Bodie: No man that ain’t right. D’Angelo: Fuck right. It ain’t about right. Its about money. Now you think Ronald McDonald go down to that basement and say “Hey Mr. Nugget, you the bomb. We selling chicken faster then you can tear the bone out. So I’m gonna write my clowny ass name on this fat ass check for you.” Shit. Man, the nigga who invented them things still working in the basement for regular wage thinking up some shit to make the fries taste better or some shit like that. Believe. [pause] Wallace: Still had the idea though.

That's some top-notch writing, right there.

What I listen to at work

2008-02-27T18:56:01Z

last.fm is great. Just punch in your favorite artists, or download a plugin, and it'll give you a "custom radio station" that, because it uses collaborative filtering, is pretty good. I've found that the best work radio station is "similar artists to Animal Collective." (unless I'm feeling aggressive, in which case I pick McLusky.)

Enjoy!

This post is not about Ari, or, the documentary report

2008-01-22T20:24:47Z

I feel that I have a pretty good handle on the sex industry in this country. I mean, there's not much to understand: men pay women or other men for sex, or to dance provocatively, or whatever. Sometimes women are the clients, but I gather that's relatively rare. There are pimps, who are the exploitative businessmen behind it all, sometimes there's a thin veneer of credibility to disguise it from the law, and so forth. I know it's actually quite complicated (please don't ream me out, certain Doctor of Philosophy on my friends list!) and I'm eliding a lot, but the basic outline is pretty straightforward.

This weekend, though, I saw a documentary that convinced me that I will never understand the sex industry in Japan. The film is "The Great Happiness Space" and it's about host boys in Japan.

Host boys are young pretty boys

who are paid, by the hour, to spend time with women in clubs, and show them a good time. I had previously heard of this phenomenon in a travel documentary, but it was presented in kind of a cursory, almost insulting way. (In Soviet Japan, sex worker pays for you!) In actuality, there are many, many points on which I am deeply, deeply confused.

* First of all, are host boys sex workers in the first place? The documentary tackles that question head-on, and the answer turns out to be no, but kinda yes, but really no, but also sometimes yes, but let's go with no. They're pretty clearly not being paid for sex, but sometimes they wind up having sex with clients anyway, but generally that's incidental to what they're being paid for. In fact, one of them points out in an interview that once he has sex with a girl, she often doesn't come back, so he pretty much never does.

* One would assume that host boys' clients are lonely middle-aged women, possibly loney businesswomen or businessmen's wives. One would be wrong, though. In fact, one would make an ass out of you and me, if one were to assume that. Most clients in the host boy club are actually provocatively dressed young women. So why do these girls need to pay for companionship? And where are they getting the money to do so? (It can be very expensive.) Well, the documentary presents an answer for this, an answer that is bourne out in interviews. It turns out, 80-90% of the host club's clients are prostitutes. Women who have sex with men for money. WELL THAT JUST ANSWERS EVERYTHING.

* The host boys speak with this amazing mix of blatant lies ("we never pressure women. We just provide an atmosphere in which she is comfortable buying more.") and blatant truths ("on an average day I'll drink ten of these bottles. I drink one, throw up, drink another, throw up, and so on. Sometimes I see blood.") One of them mentions that he doesn't even know anymore when he's lying and when he's telling the truth. I guess that's not confusing, but it's amazing nonetheless.

* These clubs are holes. Why would someone pay that much money to be entertained in such a cheesy, grungy, depressing atmosphere? I mean, I can understand hanging out in such a place, but damn, why pay that much money for the privilege?

* Where is the money going? These services are expensive, but it's impossible to tell how expensive, because of the lying. Whenever someone mentions a number, it doesn't fit with all the other numbers and seems just plain random. I don't know if any of these people have any idea how much money actually passes through their hands.

* Does the money go to drugs? Drugs are never, ever mentioned, and I would guess that they're not used. After all, host boys, as part of their jobs, must down fantastic quantities of alcohol. So, doing cocaine on top of that is probably not so appealing.

* Undoubtedly much of the money goes to hair-care product and flashy accessories. I wonder how much of Dolce & Gabana and Clairol's global sales are due to host boys.

Announcing... the poop filter!

2008-01-05T15:17:20Z

All right, clearly I'm going to be posting lots of stories about the kid. I don't want to bore anyone, gross anyone out, or clutter anyone's friends page, so I'm creating an opt-in filter to hear kid stories. It won't all be about poop, but I'm calling it the poop filter as a warning: there will be poop.

If you would like to be added to the poop filter, please let me know in comments.

Announcing Ari Alexander Fisher

2008-01-05T15:08:48Z

Ari Alexander Fisher
Born January 2, 2008, 1:48 am
6 pounds, 6 ounces
18 inches

More pictures here.

I hate so much about the things you choose to be.

2007-12-31T19:21:09Z

* Discovery of the day: when the City of Boston declares a snow emergency at 1:30am, the police drive up and down Centre Street broadcasting a recording via megaphone as if the goddamn Red Army were invading.

* What's a snow emergency? A snow emergency means you can't park on Centre Street. That seems to be it.

* My one and only resolution for the new year is to be a good father. Cheesy, I know, but I feel it's important.

* Multi-stage programming via macro makes my head hurt. Too bad it's such a vital part of my diss.

* Speaking of my diss, I have said before, and I will say again, this is what I want when I complete it.

just an observation

2007-12-13T18:15:19Z

In the Republican presidential primaries, I'm beginning to notice a worrying trend...

animal abuse.

I just... I don't know. I'm sorry.

2007-11-24T00:18:50Z

tritium @ 2007-11-13T10:58:00

2007-11-13T16:30:21Z

Inspired by a completely unrelated post on someone else's journal, this morning I remembered a newspaper item from several years back. Thinking about it some more on the T, I got even more het-up about it, because I realized something about it: it represents pretty much everything that shames me about my country today.

Here's a quick summary of the item: Emory University, world renown for its public health department, collaborated with the CDC and the federal government to study anonymous truck-stop sex as a disease vector for STDs, inspired by similar studies in other countries that revealed evidence that this was a major way that the disease spread down the "spine" of Africa. This study, along with a number of others, caused a major furor amongst the religious right, who consider it immoral and shameful. The religious right lobbied hard to get funding for the project cut off.

Why is this such a perfect storm of things I really despise about America?

- Anti-intellectualism? Check! In this case, distain for science.
- Pathological attitudes regarding sex? Check!
- Infuriating assumptions about the role of religion in public life? Check!
- Equally infuriating assumptions about the role of the government in public life? Check!
- Callous disregard for the needy? Check! In this case, by "the needy," I mean those who are at risk of contracting STDs.

I don't know why this four-year-old news item struck me today, but it did.

***********

Unrelated hypothesis: any band that uses punctuation in its name sucks on ice.

I am watching...

2007-10-25T23:35:20Z

the first five minutes of Transformers (2007).

It's already terrible.

Yet more crap

2007-10-25T20:29:56Z

* Holy JESUS, Comcast sucks. Like, customer service hangs up on me. And something that they just weren't able to do, I could do in a minute using their online interface.

* Okay, I did watch some of the baseball contest last night. I went to bed when it became clear it was turning into a rout. I tried to look up the scores from my laptop in bed, and found MLB's GameDay program, which is a user interface more suitable for monitoring the reactor core than for watching a game. Waaaay too much information.

* Also on said contest, I don't care if he's a kickass pitcher, Josh Beckett's hemp necklace and chin beard make him look like an asshole.

* And the hubris shown by Sox fans is really something. The "man on the street" question in yesterday's Metro: "how many games will it take for the Sox to knock out the Rockies?"

* Have any of you seen the TV show Pushing Daisies? I caught half of an episode last night, and it looked awesome.

* This is also awesome:

(warning: boring computer post)

2007-10-23T22:42:41Z

While attempting to build happy, the Haskell parser generator, for MacOS:

tritium:~/tmp/happy-1.17 dfisher$ ./Setup.lhs build Preprocessing executables for happy-1.17... Setup.lhs: The program happy is required but it could not be found

That's right, building happy requires happy. Now, bootstrapping compilers is a fascinating technique, but bootstrapping a parser generator seems a bit extreme. Plus, damned if I can find a precompiled binary to use; maybe I should ssh to a Unix machine and cross-compile? Damn.

Also, when I tried to find a solution for this, I come across this how-to from catamorphism. I guess this is a known problem with GHC in general?

Random updates

2007-10-23T03:34:27Z

* We painted the nursery this weekend. We painted it yellow, and the windows blue. It looks great.

* Boston in the fall is beautiful, but today it went up to 80. It's supposed to be another mild winter. That's not right.

* Last weekend, we went apple picking. Apples right off the tree are freaking delicious, and make delicious pie. Also, apple sauce.

* Apparently there was some development with the baseball contest? Anyway, everyone in town is dressed in red.

* I've been reading Dr. Spock. It's a very good reference; it's clearly the standard for a reason. Having a child will be fun, I think.

tritium @ 2007-10-12T13:56:00

2007-10-12T18:02:15Z

Well, I've had a crappy week. But instead of talking about it, why don't I just give you a video about a human leg in a barbecue smoker?

Personally, I'm hoping this becomes the next "don't tase me, bro."

Man, you people.

2007-09-25T13:43:44Z

Apparently I'm just several years behind the times when it comes to competitive eating. I can live with that.

Also: mrow.

Okay then.

2007-09-25T02:23:07Z

No one but me is fascinated by the fact that the #2 competitive eater in the world is a tiny Asian woman. Fine. That's fine.

tritium @ 2007-09-22T23:32:00

2007-09-23T03:38:22Z

Today's entirely pointless discovery:

This lady can eat 173 buffalo wings in twelve minutes. She is the face of competitive eating.

The TV report

2007-09-20T00:57:25Z

"Kid Nation" has the stink of failure about it. But I gotta say, Sophie's bicycle handles boardwalk and quagmire with aplomb. Those that doubt me suck cock by choice.

Gotten elsewhere on the LJs.

2007-09-19T21:21:48Z

"My final club has a reunion this fall, and my relationship of two years ended disastrously earlier this summer. I have an invitation for myself plus one, and am willing to show you a great time. It is a private party, in an extremely classy setting. There is no real way to describe how ornate the club is, but I guarantee that it will be the most upscale experience of your life. Think back to your high school prom, take away the terrible music, and multiply the experience by ten. You must be white, 5'6" - 5'9", young, blonde, attractive, and intelligent. You must be in school, preferably Tufts or Wellesley but BU and BC are acceptable (definitely not MIT). You should be able to hold a conversation, know when to be quiet, and polite in all your behavior. I have seen unruly guests embarrass members before, and I hope this won't be a problem. This event is black-tie, and I am willing to procure an evening gown for you. I hate to sound so harsh, but I have expectations to live up to. No Black, Asian, overweight, or unattractive women please. Ages 18-22 only. Picture required."

from here.

A couple of things that bug me.

2007-09-18T19:18:03Z

I seem to be at odds with society on a couple of points.

* The price quoted should be the price you pay. I'm not talking about estimates; if someone quotes you a price, but makes explicit that this is an estimate, and that the price can overrun, that's fine. But if something is presented as an actual price, that's what you should pay. I believe a price is fraudulent if it does not contain:
- tax
- tip
- delivery charges
- disposal charges
- any other goddamn charges
- the price of any non-optional accessories
- and, of course, "participation in program."
Somewhere along the line in Western civilization, it became acceptable to totally lie about the price of stuff. The only folks who I've found who are completely honest about the price of things is Netflix. There are any number of ways Netflix could stick it to you in pricing; they could charge for postage, for example, or start charging late fees after a certain point. But they don't; they don't even separate tax. Gas stations also tend to charge a flat rate, but they lose points for quoting prices in mills and then rounding up.

* Also on the subject of money and lies, a "deposit" is, under normal circumstances, returned or applied to a payment. A "non-refundable deposit" is a contradiction in terms. What people are referring to when they say this is more properly called a "fee."

Both of these reflect the influence of bullshit in society.

edit: Okay, sorry. I just got frustrated when I realized some of the nastier consequences of the fact that C does not have type declarations. (e.g. a struct declaration can be completed inside of a cast.) I just needed to vent about something completely unrelated for a minute.

A favor for my computer-oriented peoples.

2007-09-13T17:10:21Z

Normally I shy away from making research-related posts on my LiveJournal, but I have a question that might influence some of my research. For anyone who reads this and has done a little (or a lot) of programming, I would like to know:

What do you hate about C?

Most programmers I know have had to do a little C programming at some time or another. Opinions on the language vary, but I don't think anyone would call it a modern language. Even folks who like it, it seems, wish it would have one feature or another. So, when you do find yourself programming C, what do wish it had that it doesn't? What behavior does it have that you wish it didn't? Please try to be specific. Like, instead of saying "the type system," tell me: do you hate the fact that it gives no guarantees? Do you wish it had ML-style datatypes? Do you wish it had some sort of polymorphism that did not rely on "void *" and casts?

Feel free to rant (or not). Say what you'd like, don't feel you need to back it up; I just want to know people's opinions on the matter.