Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) made headlines last month after complaining about Congress’ new schedule that requires members to work five days a week:

“Keeping us up here eats away at families,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. “Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families — that’s what this says.”

Yet, last night, Kingston offered this advice to Americans living in poverty: work longer hours. During House debate over the minimum wage, Kingston said raising the minimum wage would do nothing for poor Americans. Instead, if people marry and work longer hours, “they would be out of poverty,” he said. “It’s an economic fact.”

[ What a fucking asshole. -k]

Think Progress » Kingston: Americans Should ‘Marry and Work Longer Hours’ To Escape Poverty

"Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco's iPhone name," Mark Chandler, senior vice president and general counsel at Cisco, said in a statement. "There is no doubt that Apple's new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission."

Cisco is seeking injunctive relief to prevent Apple from copying Cisco's iPhone trademark, the company said.

I don't know... i read this as "We strung them along until Macworld and tried to extort them, which they didn't like, and now we're suing them."

To be sure, Apple should have handled this a long time ago, but I do not trust Cisco's motives in this case. I think they pulled some shit.

Cisco sues Apple over iPhone name | News.blog | CNET News.com

Interesting, but I think the authors could have learned more from Edward Tufte (who is, of course, cited in their paper).

Their use of symbology is awful. I applaud the effort and I think it's a good start, but given smart guys who so obviously *read* the literature and know about these systems, I'm kind of astonished that the result doesn't really conform to best practices.

Or at least, best practices as I see them (and I readily admit to being a Tufte superfan).

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

"This is an actual British Government poster outside a London Metro. Looks like they ripped it straight from the set of 'Brazil.'"

Wow. Seriously wow. 1984 really is just a bit late.

Boing Boing: London metro police poster

On May 18 2003, officials overseeing an election in Schaerbeek, a suburb of Brussels, got a shock. An electronic vote-counting machine declared that 4,096 more people had cast their vote than the ballot slips testified. The machine had been thoroughly tested and deemed perfect. So what went wrong?

The answer was, literally, a strike from the heavens.

Technicians pointed the finger of blame at cosmic rays -- particles that zip across the cosmos at huge speed and, while rightly ignored by humans as a health concern, can wreak havoc with highly sensitive microelectronic circuits.

Worse engineering excuse *EVER*.

[Hah. Bad excuse, but actually a legitimate arm of research.

Kobi was working on just this subject -- the effects of particle collisions with microcircuitry -- for his masters degree at Vandy.

I very much doubt that's why that machine broke, however. Color me skeptical. -k]

Fried chips: Cosmic rays put new-generation microcircuits to the test

if you read my post here about the situation at the 585 saturday night, i thought i would provide an update.

i got an email from deke spears, one of the co-owners of the venue, which with his permission, i will go ahead and relay here verbatim after the jump.

Hi. This is Deke Spears (owner of the 585). I was the one who got on the mic and told everyone we had to stop the show. I read your blog. Thanks for writing.

We were shut down because of alcohol. The report said that the detective tried to pay for alcohol but the bartender wouldn't accept so he put the money in the tip Jar. They charged us for selling alcohol...which we didn't do. Not only did they close us down, after we got everyone off the property, they arrested me and co-owner Steven Marchi. Fulton County lock up for 15 hours is a blast!You should try it some time...

We are very sorry to the bands and to the fans who were there Saturday night. We are fighting to remedy the situation. But until further notice all shows have been cancelled. We appreciate all the support we have gotten for
the past 5 months and we hope the support will continue when we re-open.

-Deke

[ Wow, if that's all true then FUCK, fuck, fuck the PO-lice. -k]

Metroblogging Atlanta: update on the situaion at the 585.

Compact, computer-controlled, 3-dimensional woodworking machine with an easy-to-use interface. It allows a novice to make a complete project without a shop full of tools.The unique configuration allows it to perform many other woodworking functions, including ripping, cross cutting, mitering, contouring, jointing and routing. The CompuCarve can work in most soft materials, including wood, plastics (polycarbonate or cast acrylic) and certain types of high density foam.

Craftsman 3D printer.

[That is damn cool.]

Craftsman 21754 CompuCarve Compact Woodworking Machine, Computer-Controlled at Sears.com

i confess i don't get this
i know u know much more than me about this acidus but i don't see the arguments as presented in the article as self evident
i don't want all the web pages i visit to look the same
i enjoy a varied and interesting visual journey as well as one of content
i am a fundamentally visual person
idealogically i like the idea of the reader/user being in control
but the situation will evolve
you are setting out an idealogical position -- an arguably extremist and certainly presciptive position -- "things should be like this"
they may well move to that point but you're fighting 500 years of print tradition and the written tradition of the monks with their extraordinary layouts before that (in the west) calligraphy (in the east)
visual style is important
it is an element of semiotics
i'm reminded of those (who i strongly sympathise with) who rail against fashion -- high street fashion -- alternative fashion -- music fashion etc --- fine we should be individuals but we're fundamentally not -- some are more individualistic than others but fashion is an element of fitting in and being social -- we mirror the behaviour of others - that is part of the social dialogue and multi-threaded discourse -- i'm influenced a little by x and a little by y -- i identify to an extent with a particularly group, with a particular set of values, with a particular set of ideas. It is not merely a question of corporate identity. It is a statement on a fundamental level about who i'm as an individual and how I see myself fitting into society. To assert a visual style is content.
I'm not suggesting you are wrong but i do think there is more to this than technical questions.

[ I agree with this completely and will add my own completely separate argument that's based on pragmatism, devoid of artistic consideration.

That argument is that since you can't trust the user agents to actually do what they're supposed to do, developing a web page is aiming at a moving target already, even just for the PC platform. Try to evolve that to be universally readable on cell phones, screen readers, and all the rest... it's an exercise in absolute madness.

I recall my Second Disillusionment about 5 years ago, when CSS was new to me and i said to myself "Wow, this is smart, separate layout and content... brilliant!" So i get right into it, read the spec, learned the spec, read some books and web sites and started to see just how much bullshit you had to go through because of varying support for the specifications. Well, for IE do this shit, and then opera might freak out, because it's hella strict, and firefox will deal, but take 35 seconds to render.

So most people are happy to say, fuck it, ok, if the UA is going to ignore or fuck up half my work, I'll go with a print-emulating look that i don't even have to develop -- just grab a template and tweak the CSS. I did. And that was... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

RE: Publishing on the Web Is Different!

Decius wrote:

Some recent audio/video projects that use generative processes to yield
surprising results. "Temporide" does a pixel-by-pixel delay on a video,
showing many time lapses simultaneously. Spectral splicing, morphing, and
reconstitution creates new audio based out of what you feed it. And "Ghost
Jockey" generates a continuous stream of mashup audio and video.

In this talk, I will present my work on sound source separation with
applications for music. Music is repetitious in nature and this
repetition actually informs the source separation process.

DorkBot! In Atlanta! On Thursday! Who is with me!?

I'm very curious about that... I've long been interested in sound source separation, though I never did anything about it, thus proving that success only marginally has anything to do with inspiration. Lots of smart people think the same thought, but only one or two sack up and do anything about it.

I'm very disappointed in myself.

RE: Thursday, Jan 11, 2007 | dorkbot-atl

RSnake is a fucking genius. Using a file:/// URL pointed at the manual PDF installed with Acrobat, you can execute JavaScript in the local zone. Oh yeah, local file access, program execution, completely uncrippled XmlHttpRequest.

This is not good.

[Yeah, I went ahead and removed the PDFs from thesupernicety, just to be safe. Fortunately, there weren't many. Some people are super boned. -k]

It hits the fan!