Most of the country. Haiti not without it's problems before have now overnight lost about 100,000 people. To put it in scale that's over 50 times the number of people who died in hurricane Katrina, and that's only in the first few days.

The U.S., China, and the EU are all stepping up to help and give aid. The country will need to be rebuilt. This will be the first time I'm going to get to watch a country be rebuilt that isn't at war. (Other countries may have been destroyed and rebuilt in my lifetime but I haven't watched them.)

The concept of Country building blows my mind. I have a feeling that there is already large power plays going on around which country gets to rebuild (and possibly own or control) Haiti. Interesting times ahead.

The Haiti Dominican Republic Border showing how logging for charcoal has destroyed the Haitian side.

I'm angry, but I'm even more angry that it doesn't matter how angry I am.

–Francis

This American Life #348: Tough Room — Act 4: Malcolm Gladwell

It's true, but I'm not wrong.

Using nothing but "auto" settings, I've doctored up a photo I took of Alex in two formats (I used Sara's camera which can take both Raw and Jpeg at the same time. A Canon Digital Rebel XTi E05 if you're wondering, but that doesn't mean much to me.)

If this looks odd below you can click through to the comparison tool's page itself.

When I think of the Kindle, I think of an awesome device (the big one is wonderful to use) with a free data connection that needs to be hacked to be useful. Hacked to remove the ability to remove books. Hacked to allow browsing of the web. Hacked to allow my own content to be freely placed on the device. The hacking negates the free data plan because the device no longer functions along Amazon’s business model, but it’s your device – so you can use it how you like. You should be able to get your own data plan. ($20/month)

I don’t see why “E-Readers” would have to remove community behind books and libraries. I can argue that “social networks” could work around the devices and books. Especially around trading books – I’ll get into the legality of that–how authors could still get paid and the usefulness and harmfulness of DRM Encryption in that situation–some other time.

I can also argue that libraries are a place for more then retrieving books. You have librarians who are paid experts and curators of knowledge. A Kindle may have a library of books, but it doesn’t have librarians. On a side note, they don’t have quiet work areas or comfy chairs either.

But even though I have a library down the block from my house, I haven’t had the need to be in one for a long while. I have my own comfy chair, and don’t read books that often.

One thing the Kindle does facilitate that a library can’t is that I could write a book and publish it on the Kindle for free, and distribute it worldwide without cost and with an excellent margin. Sites like Lulu allow me to make print copies, but their costs are non-trivial (good rates, but not cheap). That kind of freedom is liberating. I wont argue that publishing companies are worthless, as they are not, but they’ve had a monopoly on publishing for a long time. Devices like the Kindle allowing for self-publishing make me very happy.

In my head, preferring a paper book over a kindle is akin to preferring a small black and white TV over a larger color one. I don’t see the technology being the problem; it’s a tool like any other, and it can be just as enabling for you and me as it can for companies like Amazon and BookSwim.

Comments?

Alice was born 21 inches long and weighing in at 6 pounds 11oz

She is beautiful.
I got to hear her first cry.

I just spent a long 26 hours away from home and like everybody else who's heard of pregnancy I've become an expert. Every mother is different, every baby is different. So it goes.. I've learned a few things.

1. Go to Lamaze classes, you need the practice and you need to train those muscles. Practice at home and then GO TO LAMAZE CLASSES!
2. Learn and practice pain management techniques because the pain is going to hit you especially if you're not ready.
3. You're not ready for that amount of pain.
4. The family freaks out almost more than the mother and father.
5. Don't take anything anyone says personally. Watching someone suffer for so long makes people act strangely, especially the person suffering.
6. Hot tubs are amazing. Walk around for as long as you can, but as soon as they let you get in the water. Contractions are easier under warm water. After 11 hours of pain and contractions she got in the tub and there was a baby within an hour
7. Get the doctor in the room as soon as you can. They wont stick around waiting, but give them time to get ready.
8. That first cry of the baby will make you cry too.

I learned a few more things. For example, after being part of a birth you don't need more than an hour or two of sleep for over a day. And that Zip Car is invaluable if you need a car at 11pm on a Sunday. But those eight points are my "expert" list.

Welcome to the world Alice, remember what I told you, and make sure your mom plays you those Beatles albums I gave you.

–Francis

The Whore of Mensa
A Short Story by Woody Allen

From his book "Without Feathers", Random House, 1975 (tr.it.: Citarsi Addosso, Bompiani, 1976)
Estimated Online Reading Time: About 10 Minutes

THE CLIENT

One thing about being a private investigator, you've got to learn to go with your hunches. That's why when a quivering pat of butter named Word Babcock walked into my office and laid his cards on the table, I should have trusted the cold chill that shot up my spine.

"Kaiser?" he said. "Kaiser Lupowitz?"

"That's what it says on my license," I owned up.

"You've got to help me. I'm being blackmailed. Please!" He was shaking like the lead singer in a rumba band. I pushed a glass across the desk top and a bottle of rye I keep handy for nonmedicinal purposes.

"Suppose you relax and tell me all about it."

"You … you won't tell my wife?"

"Level with me, Word. I can't make any promises." He tried pouring a drink, but you could hear the clicking sound across the street, and most of the stuff wound up in his shoes.

"I'm a working guy," he said. "Mechanical maintenance. I build and service joy buzzers. You know — those little fun gimmicks that give people a shock when they shake hands?"

"So?"

"A lot of your executives like 'em. Particularly down on Wall Street."

"Get to the point."

"I'm on the road a lot. You know how it is — lonely. Oh, not what you're thinking. See, Kaiser, I'm basically an intellectual. Sure, a guy can meet all the bimbos he wants. But the really brainy women — they're not so easy to find on short notice."

"Keep talking."

"Well, I heard of this young girl. Eighteen years old. A Yassar student. For a price, she'll come over and discuss any subject — Proust, Yeats, anthropology. Exchange of ideas. You see what I'm driving at?"

"Not exactly."

"I mean my wife is great, don't get me wrong. But she won't discuss Pound with me. Or Eliot. I didn't know that when I married her. See, I need a woman who's mentally stimulating, Kaiser. And I'm willing to pay for it. I don't want an involvement — I want a quick intellectual experience, then I want the girl to leave. Christ, Kaiser, I'm a happily married man."

"How long has this been going on?"

"Six months. Whenever I have that craving, I call Flossie. She's a madam, with a Master's in Comparative Lit. She sends me over an intellectual, see?"

So he was one of those guys whose weakness was really bright women. I felt sorry for the poor sap. I figured there must be a lot of jokers in his position, who were starved for a little intellectual communication with the opposite sex and would pay through the nose for it.

"Now she's threatening to tell my wife," he said.

"Who is?"

"Flossie. They bugged the motel room. They got tapes of me discussing The Waste Land and Styles of Radical Will, and, well, really getting into some issues. They want ten grand or they go to Carla. Kaiser, you've got to help me! Carla would die if she knew she didn't turn me on up here." The old call-girl racket. I had heard rumors that the boys at headquarters were on to something involving a group of educated women, but so far they were stymied.

"Get Flossie on the phone for me."

"What?"

"I'll take your case, Word. But I get fifty dollars a day, plus expenses. You'll have to repair a lot of joy buzzers." "It won't be ten G's worth, I'm sure of that," he said with a grin, and picked up the phone and dialed a number. I took it from him and winked. I was beginning to like him.

THE SETUP

Seconds later, a silky voice answered, and I told her what was on my mind. "I understand you can help me set up an hour of good chat," I said.

"Sure, honey. What do you have in mind?"

"I'd like to discuss Melville."

"Moby Dick or shorter novels?"

"What's the difference?"

"The price. That's all. Symbolism's extra."

"What'll it run me?"

"Fifty, maybe a hundred for Moby Dick. You want a comparative discussion — Melville and Hawthorne? That could be arranged for a hundred."

"The dough's fine," I told her and gave her the number of a room at the Plaza.

"You want a blonde or a brunette?"

"Surprise me," I said, and hung up.

"I shaved and grabbed some black coffee while I checked over the Monarch College Outline series. Hardly an hour had passed before there was a knock on my door. I opened it, and standing there was a young redhead who was packed into her slacks like two big scoops of vanilla ice cream.

"Hi, I'm Sherry." They really knew how to appeal to your fantasies. Long, straight hair, leather bag, silver earrings, no make-up.

"I'm surprised you weren't stopped, walking into the hotel dressed like that," I said. "The house dick can usually spot an intellectual."

"A five-spot cools him."

"Shall we begin?" I said, motioning her to the couch. She lit a cigarette and got right to it. "I think we could start by approaching Billy Budd as Melville's justification of the ways of God to man, n'est-ce pas?"

"Interestingly, though, not in a Miltonian sense." I was bluffing. I wanted to see if she'd go for it.

"No. Paradise Lost lacked the substructure of pessimism." She did.
"Right, right. God, you're right," I murmured.

"I think Melville reaffirmed the virtues of innocence in a naive yet sophisticated sense — don't you agree?" I let her go on. She was barely nineteen years old, but already she had developed the hardened facility of the pseudo-intellectual. She rattled off her ideas glibly, but it was all mechanical. Whenever I offered an insight, she faked a response: "Oh yes, Kaiser. Yes, baby, that's deep. A platonic comprehension of Christianity — why didn't I see it before?" We talked for about an hour and then she said she had to go. She stood up and I laid a C-note on her.

"Thanks, honey."

"There's plenty more where that came from."

"What are you trying to say?" I had piqued her curiosity. She sat down again.

"Suppose I wanted to have a party?" I said.

"Like, what kind of a party?"

"Suppose I wanted Noam Chomsky explained to me by two girls?"

"Oh, wow."

"If you'd rather forget it…"

"You'd have to speak with Flossie," she said. "It's cost you." Now was the time to tighten the screws. I flashed my private– investigator's badge and informed her it was a bust.

"What!"

"I'm fuzz, sugar, and discussing Melville for money is an 802. You can do time."

"You louse!"

"Better come clean, baby. Unless you want to tell your story down at Alfred Kazin's office, and I don't think he'd be too happy to hear it."

She began to cry. "Don't turn me in, Kaiser," she said. "I needed the money to complete my Master's. I've been turned down for a grant. Twice. Oh, Christ."

It all poured out — the whole story. Central Park West upbringing, Socialist summer camps, Brandeis. She was every dame you saw waiting in line at the Elgin or the Thalia, or penciling the words 'Yes, very true' into the margin of some book on Kant. Only somewhere along the line she had made a wrong turn.

"I needed cash. A girl friend said she knew a married guy whose wife wasn't very profound. He was into Blake. She couldn't hack it. I said sure, for a price I'd talk Blake with him. I was nervous at first. I faked a lot of it. He didn't care. My friend said there were others. Oh, I've been busted before. I got caught reading Commentary in a parked car, and I was once stopped and frisked at Tanglewood. Once more and I'm a three time loser."

"Then take me to Flossie."

She bit her lip and said, "The Hunter College Book Store is a front."

"Yes?"

"Like those bookie joints that have barbershops outside for show. You'll see."

I made a quick call to headquarters and then said to her, "Okay, sugar. You're off the hook. But don't leave town."

"She tilted her face up toward mine gratefully. "I can get you photographs of Dwight Macdonald reading," she said.

"Some other time." FLOSSIE'S

I walked into the Hunter College Book Store. The salesman, a young man with sensitive eyes, came up to me. "Can I help you?" he said.

"I'm looking for a special edition of Advertisements for Myself. I understand the author had several thousand gold-leaf copies printed up for friends."

"I'll have to check," he said. "We have a WATS line to Mailer's house."

I fixed him with a look. "Sherry sent me," I said.

"Oh, in that case, go on back." he said. He pressed a button. A wall of books opened, and I walked like a lamb into that bustling pleasure palace known as Flossie's. Red flocked wallpaper and a Victorian decor set the tone. Pale, nervous girls with black-rimmed glasses and blunt-cut hair lolled around on sofas, riffling Penguin Classics provocatively. A blonde with a big smile winked at me, nodded toward a room upstairs, and said, "Wallace Stevens, eh?" But it wasn't just intellectual experiences. They were peddling emotional ones, too. For fifty bucks, I learned, you could "relate without getting close." For a hundred, a girl would lend you her Bartok records, have dinner, and then let you watch while she had an anxiety attack. For one-fifty, you could listen to FM radio with twins. For three bills, you got the works: A thin Jewish brunette would pretend to pick you up at the Museum of Modern Art, let you read her master's, get you involved in a screaming quarrel at Elaine's over Freud's conception of women, and then fake a suicide of your choosing — the perfect evening, for some guys. Nice racket. Great town, New York.

"Like what you see?" a voice said behind me. I turned and suddenly found myself standing face to face with the business end of a .38. I'm a guy with a strong stomach, but this time it did a back flip. It was Flossie, all right. The voice was the same, but Flossie was a man. His face was hidden by a mask.

"You'll never believe this," he said, "but I don't even have a college degree. I was thrown out for low grades."

"Is that why you wear that mask?"

"I devised a complicated scheme to take over The New York Review of Books, but it meant I had to pass for Lionel Trilling. I went to Mexico for an operation. There's a doctor in Juarez who gives people Trilling's features — for a price. Something went wrong. I came out looking like Auden, with Mary McCarthy's voice. That's when I started working the other side of the law."

"Quickly, before he could tighten his finger on the trigger, I went into action. Heaving forward, I snapped my elbow across his jaw and grabbed the gun as he fell back. He hit the ground like a ton of bricks. He was still whimpering when the police showed up.

"Nice work, Kaiser," Sergeant Holmes said. "When we're through with this guy, the F.B.I. wants to have a talk with him. A little matter involving some gamblers and an annotated copy of Dante's Inferno. Take him away, boys." Later that night, I looked up an old account of mine named Gloria. She was blond. She had graduated cum laude. The difference was she majored in physical education. It felt good.

Alex forgets about the old apartment once he realizes he has a parkway full of people and pigeons to watch.

It's that time again, We're moving and I'm calling in all favors. Move in the past year? We probably helped you. If not, we certainly would have. Now we're asking for help ourselves.

If you've helped before you might want to know…

The major difference is we're already half moved!

That's right, previous moves have sucked so very fucking much that we split it up into two weekends. A half month of rent was worth saving the headaches associated with being out and cleaned in a single day. This past Saturday we filled up a uhaul van multiple times and drove tens of miles moving beds and dressers and boxes full of clothing. We've moved everything we required for weeks of living in a new place and then some. The only things that are left are the extra spices of life. You know, like kitchen utensils and bookshelves.

And the TV.

We actually need your help this weekend a bunch. We had enough people last week to make it go easy and clean but Brian, Sara, Nick and Cassie all have work this saturday, which leaves just Andrew and myself (and our faithful driver Andrew's Dad whom we owe many many thanks to.) While I have faith in their abilities to bribe coworkers and black mail managers I have doubts about the reality of catching enough of their managers cheating on their wives, husbands boyfriends and girlfriends on camera.

If you come to help us, we can offer FREE DRINKS, Lunch, and Dinner as per the usual arrangement, and even a place to stay (we do have two apartments you know). We'll also make sure to toast to you at our upcoming house party! (Which you'll have a FREE invitation to!) The party is at a tbd date in the future, and I'll admit it, it will be a free party.

Most importantly you'll have our all encompassing gratitude. We can't do the move alone, and you'll agree we shouldn't have stayed where we were. So any time you can spare means a lot to us.

Hope to hear from you soon.

–Francis (and Andrew and Brian)

And compare it to the White Strips

If you go listen to Icky Thump, it all very similar in style. I don't know Tegan and Sara too well, so I looked them up. You Tubing around finds a bunch of their songs and they've all gone different direction then Icky Thump. Which leads me to believe that Jack and Meg heard this lone song and liked it's style, so they covered it. (I'm not saying they don't like the others.) After all it does groove with their sound. It's nice to discover where some of their musical influences come from.

Walking With a Ghost front cover

Yesterday we reported that a provision in the revamped French “3 strikes” bill will allow for the punishment of ISP account holders for the copyright infringing actions of others. Now a group of hackers has set out to compromise WiFi routers en masse, in order to create an environment of plausible deniability.

I very much like this idea. It goes to show they're missing the point. They can't stop people from downloading movies and in trying to they're creating toothless laws, who will disproportionately hurt a small segment of offenders and be ineffective at stopping the behavior.

It's similar to clients asking me to lock down their computers so their kids can't get to porno websites or so they can limit their Facebook usage. I can do it, and have, but I tell them the kids will find a way around it, it's much better handled though social rather then technological methods. Educating the kids about the net is a far better method for keeping them honest, but happens to be a tall order when their parents often don't quite understand it themselves.

Recently I've found a rather effective web monitoring method that instead of blocking sites it just reports to the user how much time they spend on the site. It's meant for offices and is called webspy, and works on the theory that people don't want to spend all day at work browsing the web, they want to be "good" but just need to be kept in check. It follows the principal that when you know people are watching you'll do a better job.

I'm not going to touch on the internet piracy 3 strike laws, but I'm glad in France they're making sure a judge makes the decision to cut someone off the net and not the accuser. The overhead in that is so immense it probably wont happen. Who wants to jail their own community anyway? If everyone's committing the crime is it a crime? If it's "considered harmful" like crystal meth for example, what do you do then?

There's a big meth problem in a lot of towns and cities in the united states, I'm wondering if "Jail" is the answer. If you have a large community doing something harmful to itself, (that may actually be a crime as well) how do you recover from that? Obviously there needs to be a group effort, and some level of amnesty. I'm curious what kind of effort would be effective.

Going back to something a lot less "harmful", what about file sharing and copyright infringement? I don't consider it to be harmful to society, people are making other business models work in regards to music and movies, and there's a lot of room for growth and discovery in those directions. But lets for the sake of argument say that our current/old business models were the only ones that could work and if we want art we need to stop infringing on copyrights so artists can afford to be artists. Do we jail all offenders? Do we punish them and keep them from being able to communicate with society? Or do we find a way to convince our consitiutents that they need to come together to fix the problem?

I say constituents because it's our elected officials that pass these laws to police how we act. These are questions they should be asking, and that we should be making them ask.

And with that I'm lost in my own rant, so I'm done. Feels good to write even if it is dribble.

And then she drank billions and billions of them up..

(if that link ever breaks)

Method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion

No wires just shoes.

It's fascinating to watch these videos, but boy is he ever weird.

He strives to be a model for a way to have an industry that doesn't strip the earth of its resources but keeps control of the entire cycle of it's goods and byproducts. Of course he does a much better job explaining it. My favorite axiom from the speech is a simple one.

If it exists then it is possible.

Download mp4 in Standard Def (54MB) or HD 480p (195MB)

https://www124.americanexpress.com/cards/loyalty.do?page=expresspay

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/19/rfid-credit-cards-easily-hacked-with-8-reader/

http://www.difrwear.com/

I own a dirfwear wallet, and while it isn't perfect at blocking rfid tags at close range (3–4 inches) its a dam good walet and will stop distance and opportunistic sniffing. Like near a turnstyle or door frame. I met one of the creators at the last hope and played with a machine he had there setup for reading rfid cards at a distance.

Nice right? Let me put it in perspective. The 700 meg file I can now download in a minute and a half, and when we move to the new hardware it could take 56 seconds. Saving me 59 minutes compared to the origional connection. In actuality we'll probably never hit full speed as most servers wont pump data at 100Mbit/s nor can you guarentee that you'll get routed though the net that fast. There's a noticable speed difference when I pull from california servers compared to new york servers compared to european servers.

My mind is blown. =)

–Francis

PS For the record DNS Made Easy is a good service I just don't need it.

Leo,
I was playing with some audio processing tools with a friend and we loaded up your latest twit and saw this. Did you know your intro looked so cool? That's crazy!

On a side note, you can see this for yourself with iPhone app (and I know how you love these) called Spectrograph Lite. You can kind of see the same swigglies that sound so cool.

Enjoy your shows, keep up the good work.

–Francis

(Click the image for a crazy large png)

Really cool looking visualization of the intro to TWIT

Love is a peculiar type of thing.