䷰ an·omalo·us

• Now yes to computer, no to Internet. Better! Voice still best: 77-333-MCGEE #
• Still can't write more of 'Strings' story without tears. If I ever finish it should be good. #scifi #
• Why is #cheese so expensive in California? #
• RT @duhism: Grateful for 5 things = happiness. For 10 = bliss. For 100…Seriously, dude? Now you're just being obnoxious. http://duhism.com #
• Trying to tweet using #curl from the #Ubuntu #commandline. #

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• RT @strangerthings: Walking through Walmart with children makes me realize just how much I am *not* into "stuff." #
• The cognitive load of reading and listening to NPR simultaneously seems no greater than driving plus radio, but I can't do it. Gah language! #
• And yet there's no BONG at 4:20 — @big_ben_clock #
• RT @kimthomas 11 ways to miss the point on the Internet. "When you’re reduced to attacking people who agree with you…" http://bit.ly/xJan6 #
• It only becomes meta after the comments. Bravo. (Gah. I thought Americans were the ones incapable of grokking irony.) http://bit.ly/3LuarI #

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I was reading a magazine article with Battlestar Galactica’s Tricia Helfer, about the new BSG movie.  She explained that she is “unwilling to use a body double”, so we would see “a little bit of skin from her” in the movie.  And I’m thinking, “Wait — there are people who could and would be a nude body double for Tricia Helfer?  Are there — um — lots of them?  Do they live near here?”

I was listening to The World (Best.  Program.  Ever.)  A reporter was interviewing a woman in Nigeria about her family’s economics.  She was looking for a job to help support herself, her husband, and her nine children.

I think I see a possible area for optimizing Nigerian family economics.

Could we, like, petition the Vatican or something?  Petition them to sell all their (billions of dollars worth of) assets, give the money to Oxfam, and transition all the priests to, say, gardening?  Small-scale rural heirloom vegetable gardening, maybe?  With the gardens at least, say, 10km from the nearest primary school?

</snark>

I went nuts when my healthcare provider (back when I was employed by a company, and therefore deserved a healthcare provider) started paying for chiropractic “treatments” (here, previously.)  The theory of chiropractic is that all disease is caused by “subluxations” of the spine.  Something something energy lines.  But the real reason that this was covered, presumably, was that the co-pay was $40 for each of the patient’s visits, and the practitioner was paid $50 per visit, which works out to a rather good bargain in for-profit medical care.

Then medical plans started covering acupuncture.  And, maybe, apothecary visits.  And, whatever whatever.  And now the Senate healthcare bill …

For real …

Wants to cover prayer.  Prayer.  The patient can have a Christian Science practitioner paid $20 – $40 per day to pray for him.  Gah!  I so fucking wish I were making this up.

The bill was inserted by Orrin Hatch (booga booga booga!)

Oh, and John Kerry and Ted Kennedy.  WTF?

And politicians wonder at my, and my fellow skeptics’ — um — skepticism (?) of how their sponsors affect their votes, and how their personal religious views affect their votes, and how we can’t trust a motherfucking word that comes out of their dripping mouths.

Which leads to one last observation: Damn, is this the best work-at-home opportunity I’ve ever heard of.  Except I would be mortified to charge somebody $20 – $40 to pretend to pray for him.  But that’s really not what I do best.  How about this: I will charge any interested reader $10 per day to write a short blog post about how awesome he is.  I’ll also cross-post it to Twitter.  I will also implore, in every post, that all relevant authorities, deities, forces, energies, dragons, readers, and teapots also believe that the reader is cool.  But don’t expect me to spend more than a few minutes at it per day: I wouldn’t want you to think I was in the charity business for charitable reasons.

Graphic found at an atheist site today:

OK, so, look, you know I’m not wont to give Judeo-Christian scripture the benefit of the doubt.  I’d jump on the former if it were remotely fair.  But it isn’t.

I’ve been reading Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, which is absolutely fascinating.  If you thought The Da Vinci Code was kinda cool, and felt like it was “taking a class”, and plowed through the hack writing for the neato stuff about religious secrecy, then, well, you’re an idiot, but a forgivable one; it was nicely packaged.  But Lost Christianities was the book you wanted to read all along.  I know it doesn’t have albino assassins or anything in it, but it’s still gripping.  And while the Luke 19 bit isn’t directly addressed in Ehrman, his books give one a much better understanding of the heterogeneity of early doctrinaires and the numerous forgeries, flame wars, actual flames, actual wars, and other assorted weird stuff going on in 2^nd-3^rd century proto-Christendom.

So, here’s Luke 19, in overview:

Verses 1 – 10: “Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he”
Verses 11 – 25: Parable of the Talents, which neocons love so much because they can interpret it as blessing the super-rich who make all their money by investing
Verse 26: “Can I get a witness?!”
Verses 26 – 27: OMFG Hail Hitler!!!1!
Verses 28 on: And then he went to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples stole a horse, and he taught random stuff that was probably furiously modified by later writers, and cried and shit.

Great.  Let’s go back to verses 26 to 27.  Read it in context.  Here it is in KJV:

19:24  And he said unto them that stood by, Take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds.
19:25 (And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds.)
19:26 For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.
19:27 But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.
19:28 And when he had thus spoken, he went before, ascending up to Jerusalem.
19:29 And it came to pass, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount called the mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples,

There is no way that was in the original.  Damn.  Even in translation it stands out in glaring blood-red.  Look, atheists: you can’t just take random verses out of context and call Christians Nazis.  You need to glork the context a bit more.  I know it’s weird to talk about the impropriety of surreptitiously corrupting Sci-Fi for later generations, but you are not helping if you just stand at the sidelines and throw stuff into the argument.

I had a hard time choosing this week.  Because of the events of the last week, I thought anything I chose could have subtext read into it.  If you don’t get that, that’s fine, and if you want subtext for this, go ahead, it’s probably there — but I’ll put this out as a great set of lyrics.

Save You

I’m gonna save you, fucker; I’m not gonna lose you
Feeling cocky and strong, can’t let you go
Too important to me, too important to us, we’d be lost without you
Baby, let yourself fall: I’m right below you now

And fuck me if I say something you don’t wanna hear, fuck me
And fuck me if you only hear what you wanna hear
Fuck me if I care: but I’m not leaving here

You helped me when I was down; I’ll help when you’re down
Why are you hitting yourself?  Come on, hit me instead!
Let’s pick up your will, it’s grown fat and lazy
I’m sympathetic as well, but don’t go on me now

And I’m not living this life without you, I’m selfish and clear
And you’re not leaving here without me, I don’t wanna be without my best friend
Wake up to see you could have it all

‘Cause there is but you, something within you
It’s taken control; let’s beat it, get up, let’s go
Oh, you’re in your own world, let’s see the whole world
Let’s pick up your soul

And fuck me if I say something you don’t wanna hear, fuck me
And fuck me if you only hear the treble in your head
Please help me to help you help yourself
Help me help yourself
Please want me to
Please let me to help you

All Vedder Tuesday

• Whoever thought cats could be trusted with sharp weapons on their limbs needs his head examined. #
• "We could not find a match for the [...] Reentry Number you entered".  That's fine.  I really wanted to retype for 2.5 hours of work. #
• RT @henkvaness: Halloween joke in http://www.google.com/robots.txt : trick or treat, see screenshot  http://bit.ly/EPrDX #
• My #PageRank went from 4 to 0 when I rebranded my site name & URL.  I hoped #301s and the same content would preserve it. http://an.omalo.us #
• #TT: #TheCranberries's "I Can't Be With You" takes me back to a 15-y.o. #highschool breakup.  Lame, yes?  #musicmemory #
• "Weakness fading into warmth that became perfect, endless darkness." — #JimButcher.  Phone is on, but only call in emergency. #Purplesleep! #

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Hey, you remember some years ago when we all headed over to WWDN to, essentially, make fun of someone, and he turned out to be an admirable, decent, articulate, multi-faceted, stand-up example of a guy?  Well, Brent Spiner’s now on Twitter.  And the man is a genius, in an amping-snarkitude-and-wit-to-eleven kind of way.

Just remember, when he’s parrying people, he’s actually saying “fuck you”, and remember that when he says “fuck you” to them, he’s actually saying “fuck you” to you, and remember that even though he just told you to go fuck yourself, the man’s got a rapier.  Or, in better words than mine, from his abduction fantasy:

I drifted higher and higher. I was convinced I was a part of the light. But I wasn’t. It was a portal of some sort and I was being sucked in.  It felt strange.  Unlike any sucking experience I’ve ever had.

• #HappySamhain, everyone! Tell stories about departed friends, light two bonfires, set out extra silverware, and do some accounting! #samhain #
• Thanks for the grooming, #cat, but would you switch to a different square cm? #

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• RT @denyreligion: http://bit.ly/1nwUgE [Or: The rest are Mediterranean Mystery Religions, except for ours, which is 100% correct] #atheism #
• RT @greenchangeorg: 40% of Obama's top fundraisers got gov. posts: http://bit.ly/4uBbda [Anyone vet this? Some of them look OK. The others?] #
• Would my #TwitterFollowers click through to http://an.omalo.us? Nothing sketchy, I just need test a new click-based. #WP / #Twtter widget. #

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• Bravo, @HomeDepot, for not yielding to (silly) pressure in the "button story" http://bit.ly/3ri4jd http://bit.ly/3do2Il #
• Yummy #melodic #Celtic #gothic #femalefronted #folk #metal: http://bit.ly/1oC5l
  (Yes, odd. Think #Solas meets #Sirenia) #Midnattsol #music #
• Would you pay for a #RegularExpression-enabled #Google search account? Plz answer and RT #googleregexp [me: yes, $100/yr] #
• Peet's #Coffee email: "Can an #urban #mushroom company #SaveTheWorld?"  I'm guessing "No". http://bit.ly/3BvSik
  @PeetsHomestead #
• RT @PeetsHomestead: A regular customer just did a wonderful thing. She bought a drink for the 9th customer following her http://bit.ly/Vza50 #
• Help: What variety of store would have the cheapest #candles? Halloween store? Big box? Craft? 99c? I need about two dozen *today*. #candle #
• Mega mega huge huge huge recommendation for @Brizzly. Should be the default online #TwitterClient. 10 referrals –> http://bit.ly/2snC0b #

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• "No batteries required – powered by wishful thinking" Control-a-Cat remote control http://bit.ly/4AKV7
  [insert Scientology joke] #
• #Baconnaise: #bacon-flavored mayonnaise! http://bit.ly/1aQOIU
  [vegetarian and kosher. ohhhhh-kay (?)]  No kickback on these links, BTW. #

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» Disability Doc

I just went to my state-appointed disability doctor today.  Different one from last time.  This doctor actually seemed to care.

The nurse had taken my blood pressure.  It was high.  Without health insurance I have been unable to afford medication out-of-pocket.  The doctor went about explaining it to me:

Doc:  Your blood pressure is very high.  It should be [switch to kindergarten teacher voice] One.  Thir.  Tee.  Oh.  Ver.  Nine.  Tee.  Or lower.

And I’m thinking, What the fuck, doc?  I was in an on-the-job accident, I didn’t have my frontal lobe removed.  Quick, I thought.  I need a shibboleth.

Joshua:  It’s the diastolic that’s especially bothering me about that.

And a light goes on behind her eyes.  Gooooood doctor, I think.  Maybe we can talk like adults now.

» A Levenshtein Edit Distance of “maybe pay attention to the computer”

I was pretty sure that I was going to spell “shibboleth” and “diastolic” correctly in that previous sentence.  And I seemed to.  So I tried appending a ‘q’ to the end of each, and Firefox recognized the modifications as errors.  I have to do this because of an apparent bug in Firefox in which the spell-checker will sometimes turn off without warning, leaving me wondering if there are false negatives.  Which leads me to a story that:

My ex-wife was/is one of the worst spellers I have ever met.  She makes my father look like the O.E.D.  When she was first telling me where her parents live, and where [Redacted.  Gawd.  The casual reader has no idea how much shit I redact -- how much shit I unilaterally redact, as far as blogs go -- about the divorce.  I believe that discretion is the better part of valor, but I can't even allude to the fact that I'm being discreet without losing valor.  So I'm going to spend one whuffie on this rather innocuous story that I'd probably tell about anyone, and one more on this very allusion to valor.  If that's enough to send you on your way, happy trails.  Nine fucking years.  Aargh.]

Anyway.  She emailed me her parents’ address, and I was going to drive down there with my mother.  My mother was looking up directions on Mapquest.  I read the address from my email, and said “The street is ‘Vangard’.  Without a ‘u’.”  Good thing for fuzzy matches.  The street is, of course, ‘Vanguard’.

So at one point in our marriage, Jenn had left a printout for work on the coffee table and my eyes caught a few words moving past it.  There was a glaring typo.  I said, as meekly as I could, “Hey, do you want me to edit this for typos?”  She said “yes”.

So I’m reading this document, and it’s just riddled with misspelled words.  So I fix them with a pen.  And, to help, I tell her, “There’s a setting you can turn on in Microsoft Word so that it underlines typos in red as you type them.”

And she says, “Oh, it’s on, the computer is just wrong a lot of the time.”

Thank whatever that she caught the typo on the tattoo artist’s essay for her second (and fucking huge) tattoo with a line from a friend’s poem surrounding it.  She didn’t let me copy-edit that.

OK, maybe that was more than one whuffie.  I don’t care.

» Macintrash

I’m typing this — once again — one one of my Mom’s MacBooks.  Firefox had slowed to a crawl.  I tried quitting it to restart it, but, no, you apparently can’t restart an application through the application menu if it’s stopped responding.  But I also couldn’t do anything else on the system; full freeze.  So I hard-power-cycled it (thank you, Steve, that the OS did not override that), the computer restarted, and: Firefox is gone from the quick-launch menu!  I thought I was missing it but, no, it just wasn’t there.  Then I realized I was being foolish: of course when an application crashes you should remove the ability to restart it quickly it in the future.  Doing otherwise would be ludicrous.

(Yes, I know I’m typing this on that very Mac.  To avoid hypocrisy — as far as can be avoided after this post — I’m turning it off as soon as I hit “Publish”.)

(And yes, I know, I’m in a terrible mood.  Sorry.)

I have a shirt that I love from ThinkGeek.  It reads:

This is through-and-through a math joke, to the point that I think few people who see it really get how funny it is.  Niall doesn’t get it, either, but at least he’s super-gracious about it:

“Daddy, I know you really like that shirt, but I don’t want you to store two-plus-two-equals-five in your brain, because two-plus-two-equals-four.  OK?”

• Damn, atted porn #spam.  Aargh.  I wish the "bottom feeders" would *actually* go to the bottom of the ocean.  I mean that in a nice way. #
• So head-over-heels for #FlowingTears's 'Firedream'. The lyrics are cheesy #heavymetal #satanism, but just ignore them. http://bit.ly/24phBE #

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Eight!  Eight is great!  (or, at least, good enough for Rebecca Gayheart)  This may be the longest any an.omalo.us tradition has gone on.

In commemoration of that — or, you know, just because I feel like it — I’m pulling out a huge heavy-hitter this week.

Marker In the Sand

There is a marker;
No one sees it ’cause the sand
Has covered over
All the messages it kept;
From misunderstanding
What Original Truth was,
And now expanding
In a faith, but not in love

What went wrong?
Walking tightrope high
Over moral ground
Seeing visions of
Falling up somehow.
Oh, do come down!
With the living let what is living love.
So unforgiving, yet needing forgiveness first

God, what do you say?

Those undecided
Needn’t have faith to be free;
And those misguided,
There was a plan for them to be!
Now you’ve got both sides
Claiming ‘Killing in God’s Name’,
But God is nowhere to be found, conveniently

What goes on?
Walking tightrope high
Over moral ground.
Walk the bridges before you burn them down!
Do come ’round
With the living let what is living love.
Unforgiving, yet needing forgiveness first

God, what do you say?
God, what do you say?

I feel a sickness,
A sickness coming over me,
Like watching freedom
Being sucked straight out to sea.
And the solution?
Well, from me, far would it be
But the delusion is feeling dangerous to me

What goes wrong?
Walking tightrope high
Over moral ground
Seeing visions of falling up somehow
Oh, do come down!
With the living let what is living love,
Unforgiving yet needing forgiveness first

Oh, what do you say?
God, what do you say?

Calling out, calling out!
I’m calling out, calling out!

Back next week!

All Vedder Tuesday

• When someone begins every third sentence "To be honest", I wonder what's going on the other two-thirds of the time. *BAD* habit. #
• I have this *sublime* #grossout story that just happened to me — absolutely hilarious — and I can't bring myself to inflict it on anyone. #
• #LivKristine's "Blue Emptiness" just showed up on last.fm radio. I've loved this song since I first heard it. http://bit.ly/awYXp
  #faith #
• RT @denyreligion: Create Your Own Pedo Priest Halloween Costume #atheism http://bit.ly/3b2cgM [NOT FUNNY. Hateful and inappropriate.] #
• It's going to bother some people that I'm writing this, but #Razorbliss is an *awesome* #albumname. http://bit.ly/2CcvSU
  #FlowingTears #
• Thank you @SenatorReid for standing up for America & putting a public option in the Senate bill. Sign and RT: http://is.gd/4CQRf [next: 60!] #
• Cool site (only explored stats so far): @twerpscan http://bit.ly/1hv0Y1
  #twitterapps #twittertools #
• #FlowingTears, "Firedream"; #EddieVedder, "Long Nights" #MusicMonday #MM #

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• RT @denyreligion: Jesus Christ on a Unicorn Commemorative Plate #atheism #humor http://bit.ly/3u5oAw (this is funny, right?  not just mean?) #
• Don't forget, #Jesus was a #Republican http://bit.ly/4w7hG0 [sharp inhalation of breath] #atheism #religion #gop #hc09 #hc #
• Every #bitly link I include, I get an immediate six visits.  Do some #Twitterapps pre-fetch pages?  Or just expand the URLs? #
• Waiting for #Twitter to implement a weighted authority calculation to replace #Followers, to combat zombie followers. Has to be soon, right? #
• Story i'm writing –  Strings – keeps moving me to tears. Either best time to write or worst. #
• Worst. Stopping. #
• Can someone email me some #Ambien?  65mg should do it. #

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I’ve been using last.fm for about 2.5 years now (hi Karina!), and I’ve been scrobbling my music for much of that time.  Eventually, patterns should emerge.  Such as this compilation of my “Top Artists” that it displays for me:

1. Pearl Jam
2. Eddie Izzard
3. Nirvana
4. The Chieftains
5. Frédéric Chopin
6. Tally Hall
7. Queensrÿche
8. Stone Temple Pilots
9. Led Zeppelin
10. Argerich / Freire / Kremer / Maisky [performing Saint-Saëns's Le Carnaval des Animaux]
11. Lacuna Coil
12. Tool
13. Rush
14. Dream Theater
15. Loreena McKennitt

I’m not sure I could/would have come up with that exact list in that exact order on my own, but, yes, that’s a pretty good ranking of my tastes, save maybe the Saint-Saëns, which is pretty much all Aquarium, and pretty much all Niall.

Now, why and how that list could represent the top 15 choices of one person is left as an exercise to a suitably intrepid and demented reader.

• RT @denyreligion Fighting Anti-Atheist Bigotry and Discrimination #atheism http://bit.ly/1S0eLL #
• #Google/#God #humor: http://bit.ly/1tZZik.  Meta-ly reminds me of #STDERR humor: http://bit.ly/oJeOt #
• "Star Wart" #oneletteroffmovies #
• "The Empire Strikes Jack" #oneletteroffmovies #
• "Dick Racy" #oneletteroffmovies #
• "The Returd of the King" #oneletteroffmovies #
• "Rex the Cunt" (*not* a children's claymation show) #oneletteroffmovies #
• "Good Wild Hunting" #oneletteroffmovies #
• RT @RobGuizio … The Two Tokers … #oneletteroffmovies #
• "A Kiss Before Dyeing" (I'll stop soon) #oneletteroffmovies #
• "2 Days in the Alley" #oneletteroffmovies #
• The "Born On" date for this #beer was 45 mfing years ago: http://bit.ly/hQ9DF #yeast #
• Buying Twitter followers (no link;  no desire to uprank them) seems more absurd than buying online game equipment with real money. #
• "Twitter Tools" for #Wordpress can't (?) round-trip #Unicode. So, "new post" tweets are getting recycled on the blog. No more "?", sorry. #
• #HappyBirthdayKaty is #TT.  #Google #ImFeelingLucky for "wikipedia katy" gives http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katy_Perry. Thanks, Google & WP! #
• I wish #googlewave sent #email notifications of new waves.  I'm kinda missing the point, aren't I? #
• RT @scott_lowe http://tr.im/CWQB "#ZFS is #opensource … [#Apple] may feel it will –> file system attacks, competition" ohshitcompetition! #
• #chihost's server132 is down. Ergo, ? an·omalo·us is down; my email is down; my readers (both?) are bummed; I can't keep programming. Grrr. #
• Key-next-to-the-spacebar-on-a- #Mac ("Command"? "Open- #Apple"? "Swirly"?)-SHIFT-CLICK in #Firefox opens a background tab! Moarplz #hatemacs #
• RT @postsecret http://translationparty.com.  By the way, "My son is married to the best scary" #translationparty #
• I just entered a mild phrase at #translationparty.com and got "I will start shooting" as a result. ONLY USE IF YOU SPEAK ENGLISH WELL. #
• Oh hey cool! I found a phrase that gets into a stable oscillation. Order 2.  Find one higher?  http://translationparty.com #translationparty #

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𝌐 an·omalo·us has had mega-fun with automatic translators; first Babelfish with holiday cheer, then (unsolved) puzzles with Google Translate.

Now here comes translationparty.com, doing one thing and doing it well: in and out of Japanese (always a fun language for translators) until equilibrium is reached.

I was ecstatic when I found a stable oscillator (order 2), but it turns out those are quite common (even if the site doesn’t recognize that it’s stable at order > 1.)  Then I found an order 4!  A→B→C→D→A.  Here it is, with thanks to Eddie Izzard.

OK!  Beat that!  Game on!

(No one is going to play, is he?  Then I will be very   )

At Niall’s new after school program …

Of which I wasn’t included in the decision …

And didn’t yet know the name of …

And didn’t have the address for …

Because I didn’t know he had already been transferred to it …

At a church …

I went to pick him up, and was on the authorized pickup list!

On the last line …

In different handwriting …

Under Jenn’s boyfriend’s name.

[Insert.  Emotion.  Here.]

• What the hell? There are only 15 free mp3 downloads in the category "Apocalyptic Folk" at last.fm?! Slackers! (gawd I love taxonomy.) #
• New ? an·omalo·us post: iPod reaches ( (Age / 2) + 7 ) http://bit.ly/3uCMmi #apple #ipod #
• AC adapter just switched off. Or died. No magic smoke, but I can smell mystic ozone. Wrapped it in an icepack. It will call in the morning. #
• A tweet is not sufficient, but I'm horrified at how clannish and in-groupy many online atheists are. Invite. Teach. Don't belittle. #atheism #
• New ? an·omalo·us post: Amazon "Whispernet" http://bit.ly/3jFP3l #anomalous #joshuamcgee #

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The Amazon Kindle device uses a 3G network (they call it “WhisperNet” which is awfully precious, no?) to download books to the device “in under a minute”.  Presumably, they’re just paying Sprint or someone for the airtime, and there’s a SIM card inside the case.  Amazon offers an integrated web browser on the Kindle, and its use is free.  Free.  Browse to your heart’s content over a high-speed cellular connection, to any site you want, and Amazon will pay the OEM supplier for the airtime.

Thing is, though, it should be somewhere between “easy” and “not all that difficult” to clone the SIM card; forge a MAC address; whatever.  Maybe the traffic all goes through Amazon, and there’s a key exchange.  Somehow Amazon knows which Kindle is which, and can server-push books to any Kindle they wish, and this should give us some hints.  Whatever.  Not impossible.  So all one would need would be a dead Kindle or — here’s the thing — a working Kindle with wireless turned off (there’s a physical switch), and one could use “Whispernet” on a Linux laptop.  Yes, for free.

I hesitate to write this — although (haven’t searched) it’s probably been discussed of before — because this would be the absolute death knell of free Amazon browsing.  And it is mega convenient to check Gmail on my Kindle at a tea shop or whatever.  But there will be a resurrection real quick.  Here we have a hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars product line that ships with, presumably, free 3G (from the device) forever.  Now we have a precedent.  Amazon pays whomever (my money’s still on Sprint), but this (if Amazon have done their projections right) is lost in the clinking coins.  Mobile data networking is getting faster and faster, and cheaper and cheaper, and it may rapidly reach the point where it’s too cheap to charge for.  And, of course, telephony and SMS can all be done on the Web, and better.  Amortize it over, what?  The cost of a $70 PC-CARD?  A $5 “all you want” gift card you can buy at Starbucks?  Or have it offered as a loss leader for something else (maybe something like On^★Star which, somewhat ironically, puts a low-efficiency and imprecise actual person in the data loop)?  Fifteen years ago I was doing research in ubicomp.  All our ideas were things like “you take something the size of a credit card to one of the many kiosks in a public area and….”  Ha!

What I do know is:

1. It’s 15 years later.
2. There are people at least as smart as I working on this.
3. Lots of them.
4. And they’re working in groups.

I’ve held off getting an iPod because they hadn’t crossed into the realm where they met my needs.

They have now.

Here’s the model:

So, we’ve all done work.  Apple designed it; Amazon is selling it; I’m recognizing that I want it.  Now it’s the turn for a dedicated reader to buy one for me.  Wishlist.  kthnxbye

• Huh. OK. Pretty sure from #ParallelPlay by #TimPage that I have #Aspergers. #FreshAir mp3: http://bit.ly/kkOLt; book http://bit.ly/3A8NJj #
• New blog post: Vedder Tuesday VII anomalous #
• New ? an·omalo·us post: RSS readers have my deep apologies… #
• RT @BarackObama "You've made 35,000 calls to #Congress already! Help us get to 100,000 #hc09" (why is #Obama organizing a #DDoS attack?) #
• I wonder if, when #Ev was inventing #Twitter, if he thought the best use of it would be to mention #cat #flatulence. Holy shit, #Sebastian! #
• Sebastian (cat) was apparently able to hit CTRL-ALT-F6 by *napping* on my keyboard, taking me to a text login. Just try to duplicate that! #
• 22 September! I mean (shit!) 21 October! I mean YOU WILL ALL DIE!!!1! (WTF? http://home.flash.net/~evt/rapture.htm) #atheism #rapture #
• RT @denyreligion: 'Reason To Be' – Creepy Christian Kids Show #atheism http://bit.ly/9y8Tq (No quip. *Not* *funny*. THIS IS #CHILDABUSE.) #
• RT @center4inquiry http://bit.ly/Os4km (Archdiocese: "I’m not really sure what their message is, to be honest." KINDA THE PROBLEM.) #atheism #
• "No God" is #TT (yay!). I'd ignore, but curious whether 2 words is the max #TT size. Exercise: write TT hasher in <10 #Perl lines. #atheism #
• Critical mass on trends is a weird thing. Amused that the pro-Godders are (naively?) putting "No God" in their tweets. Ha! #atheism #TT #
• RT @jaseface: In an ironic twist, the whole thing was started over an influx of "No God, no peace. Know God, know peace." tweets. #atheism #
• RT @donquaketurbo @revrunwisdom: "No God, Know Peace. Know God, No Peace!" (aah, #memes! my #Darwin fish can eat your never mind) #atheism #
• #GoogleNotebook was one of their best offerings, and #Google have discontinued it. Shame. They suggest replacements; nothing near as good. #
• Do you know how many Children's #Tylenol you have to take to equal one extra-strength tablet? Roughly a metric handful. Aarghfucksaccharine. #
• Best. Advisory. Ever. "Warning, this title contains unusual and pretty much impossible #explicit #sex." #Amazon: http://bit.ly/3JpV5d #
• RT @denyreligion: Know your Koran, win a gun! #atheism http://bit.ly/1X3M2F (Or a frakking LAND MINE. Really. I so wish this were a joke.) #
• New ? an·omalo·us post: Amazon: FAIL http://bit.ly/dJogo #anomalous #amazon #cutting #
• RT @scott_lowe Some people are like binary: Yes/No, On/Off, Black/White, Friend/Enemy. It's quite irritating, to be honest [no dichotomies!] #

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… but I have spent hours trying to disable Google Ads in the RSS feeds, which I apparently added manually at some point.  This is very frustrating, not least because my web host kills my greps after a tiny execution time.  So, sorry, and aargh, and I’ll fix it, I promise.

Coming from the rich field of “artists with our own mood disorders” (quick shout-out to my homies Henry, Frédéric, and Edgar.  Boyeez!) is one of those startling bits of Vedder’s poetry that I could get tattooed.  On the insides of my eyelids.

In Hiding

I shut and locked the front door; no way in or out
I turned and walked the hallway and pulled the curtains down
I knelt and emptied the mouth of every plug around
But nothing’s sound
Nothing’s sound

I stayed where my last step left me, ignored all my rounds
Soon I was seeing visions and cracks along the walls
They were upside down

I swallow my words to keep from lying
I swallow my face just to keep from biting
I swallowed my breath and went deep, I was diving. Diving.
I surfaced and all of my being was enlightened
Now I’m…

I’m in hiding
I’m in hiding!
I’m in hiding
I’m in hiding

It’s been about three days now since I’ve been aground
No longer overwhelmed and it seems so simple now
It’s funny when things change so much; it’s all state of mind

I swallowed my words to keep from lying
I swallowed my face just to keep from biting
I swallowed my breath and went deep, I was diving. I was diving.
I surfaced and all of my being was enlightened
Now I’m…

I’m in hiding
I’m in hiding!
I’m in hiding
I’m in hiding
I’m in hiding
I’m in hiding!
I’m in hiding
I’m in hiding

All Vedder Tuesday