Checksum Arcanius

Related to a previous bit I posted, this is from the Wall Street Journal Online:

Twists and Turns

“State of Fear” is, in a sense, the novelization of a speech that Mr. Crichton delivered in September 2003 at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club. He argued there that environmentalism is essentially a religion, a belief-system based on faith, not fact. To make this point, the novel weaves real scientific data and all too real political machinations into the twists and turns of its gripping story.
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Is such a good movie. Go watch it.

A group conversation over a math project led me to this new task switcher, a very cool little power toy for Windows XP that resembles somewhat the task switching in Mac OS X, with a window preview to help you figure out which window you actually want to switch to, which is especially useful for when you have multiple instances of the same application open. I suggest it to any user of Windows XP.

After work today, I donated blood at the Puget Sound Blood Center in Bellevue. I had been drinking water all day in preperation. The attendant who gave me the medical interview, however, told me that its more important how much I drink the day before. Oh well.

I have now donated 10 pints at the PSBC and a few more with Red Cross and Intermountain Healthcare down in Utah. Since 8 pints is a gallon, the attendant asked me if I had my gallon pin yet. I told her no, I did not, so I got one after the donation.

Since the early times, I have been timing my donations, but with two months between each visit, I found that I could not always remember how long I took. I know I have done better than six minutes, but I have never broken five, so that is my goal. I started recording the times and dates in my palm pilot the last time I went, and at that time I donated in 6:15. Today was worse, I hit 7:08. I was kinda unhappy that the attendant took so long to get the bag down on the hanger; think that hurt my time. I think next time I will have to coach the attendant on how to help me get a better time. (FYI: I tme from the moment they pull the stopper off of the tube until the bag falls due to weight.)

As always, I felt quite good after the donation. I had some “Cougar Mountain” cookies afterwards which were yummy in the tummy as well. Then I came home, got surround sound Power DVD working, and slipped in Gladiator, which I picked up at Target a week or so ago.

For the past 8 weeks, I have carted around a FIRST Lego League table, basically a big piece of plywood attached to 2×4’s, in the back of my truck twice a week. I would take it from Cougar Mountain to the school on Tuesdays, then back on Fridays. Especially after the rains set in and a tarp was required to prevent the thing from getting too wet, it became quite the hassle. Lets just say that a piece of wood just too big for the bed of the truck, and a tailgate that doesn’t stay closed very well, plus a tarp thats about two times too big, all add up to a big mess when crusing down the highway at 70 mph… or even 50 mph for that matter. I had to stop a number of times on my way between places to stop the tarp from billowing up and blocking my entire rearview mirror – and on a truck without a right side view mirror, that is a big deal. I’ve had the distinct honor or merging blindly to my right, hoping that no one is over there, and trusting that if they are, they’re getting out of the way. Then there was that time where the tailgate popped open and the table fell halfway out, freaking out the driver behind me pretty well. Fortunately, one of the 2×4’s jammed in the tailgate crack, and everyone survived the incident. That was as close to disaster as I came, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was flirting with it all the time. Now thats over, and this Saturday is the 2004 FIRST Lego League competition for Washington State. I’m volunteering there, and then tis no real FLL for another year. Kinda. We might start up some sort of year-round program, but it won’t be a high stress. At least, I’m not taking the table anywhere.

Excellent article in today’s Parade magazine by Michael Crichton about the decades of false doomsday predictions he’s seen. It won’t be online until the 13th of December, 2004, but you can read it today by picking up a Sunday Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer.

In fact, the trend of false doomsday predictions goes back further than even Mr. Chichton points out, but the author is working only from his personal recollections. In fact, way back in the 18th century (1798), Thomas Malthus published his Essay on the Principal of Population, in which he observed “that in nature plants and animals produce far more offspring than can survive, and that Man too is capable of overproducing if left unchecked. Malthus concluded that unless family size was regulated, man’s misery of famine would become globally epidemic and eventually consume Man” (berkley.edu).

As Crichton points out, doomsday predictions have been around for all time. Until we learn to generally ignore them (as Crichton recommends), we will continue to live in fear, and hurt ourselves with legislation reacting to problems that don’t really exist.

Browsing the newspaper today (Seattle Times), I came across the following: “Oklahoma routs Colorado 35-0 in Big 12 Championship.”

Which isn’t true.

Ok, they got the winner right, but I watched that game. The score was 42-3.

In many circumstances when I know better, I have noticed errors like this in newspapers, both large and small. For things of this nature, where there is no reason for them to report it wrong, I’m sure that its just inattention to detail, tight deadlines, or not really caring about the subject in this case. Nevertheless, it does lead me to wonder how badly things could get messed up – especially when there is a bias because the reporter cares about the topic one way or another.

Every time this happens, I use it to remind myself that just because I’ve only heard one version of a story, that doesn’t mean I know the truth. I have seen wrong dates by ten years, outright false information about an organization, quotes that were never uttered, statistics twisted to suit a purpose (even I have done this), and all of these in newspapers who claim their job is to provide accurate, unbiased information (as I read on the Seattle P-I opinion page just before the election, they think the rest of the pages have no particulat bias).

So just remember, even if you heard it somewhere, it doesn’t make it true, or even close in many cases.

Sure, I listen to conservative talk radio sometimes (and get pissed off when Michael Medved talks about how government becoming involved in the definition of marriage is somehow justified when government becoming involved in finances is not), but I also listen to liberal talk radio (not Air America, mind you, but Kiro’s Erin Hart and Mike Webb (who is, by the way, the only talk show host I’m talked to on the air (how do you like these triple parentheses!))).

I encourage you to do the same. You liberals out there who make a habit out of Mother Jones or The Atlantic, take the chance to read National Review sometime. If you saw and loved Fareinheit 9/11, go watch Fareinhype 9/11, go read 59 deciets in Farenheit 9/11. And you conservatives who have seen and read these things without ever seeing the orginal, now is the time. Now is the time to pick up a liberal magazine and read the other side. It won’t hurt you, I promise.