Dear Intarwub

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Please get one of these for LawyerHeathen. Last week was his birthday; it’s the least you can do. kthxbi.

More from Frank:

What you see in the picture is actually already on the market – the box with the graph is a pump just like mine, above that is the continuous blood glucose moniter transmitter that talks to the pump. What will make that combination an artificial pancreas is the algorithm that will do all the predicting and deciding. I was on a national JDRF conference call a few months back to discuss that very topic. The current algorithm is getting very, VERY close to actually predicting future blood sugars down to the mg/dl. It is scary good, but not good enough, yet. More testing is required and that takes millions and millions of dollars. Truly dollars well spent, though. The JDRF working hard to get this to market and to get it covered by insurance companies so people can get one.

This is an excellent reason to give money to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. We do. So should you.

How We Are Being Screwed

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Fred Clark explains the FICO scam for us:

Here’s how the scam works. You’ve got a $10,000 limit on a credit card and you’re carrying $2,500 due to a recent dental procedure. The lender, in the name of reducing risk, abruptly reduces the limit on your card to $4,000, announcing this change on page seven of the nano-type in a booklet mailed with your next monthly bill. Now instead of a 25-percent utilization rate, you’ve got a 63-percent utilization rate (they round up, when convenient), lowering your credit score.

That lower credit score means you no longer “qualify” for your previous rate of 9.9 percent and will now be paying 19.1 percent. Oh, and there’s a one-time fee of $35 dollars, conveniently added to your existing balance, for exceeding 50 percent of your available limit.

Unfortunately for you, these changes in your balance and rate became effective at 9 a.m. on the 15th of the month. Your electronic payment, dutifully set for the previous minimum payment, is credited to your account at 1 p.m. on the 15th. That minimum payment was based on the earlier interest rate, so it’s no longer adequate to cover your newer, higher minimum payment. A $35 late fee is therefore added to your balance and this delinquency is reported to the triumvirate, contributing to the further reduction of your credit scores. Second verse, same as the first.

The entire affair is designed to perpetuate both “bad” credit and high debt. Banks are not your friends. Frankly, no corporation is your friend. Behave accordingly.

Ah, the Mouth of the South

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MeFi noticed Jerry Clower today, and has a nice selection of his bits pointed out (at YouTube) for your perusal. If you grew up in the southeast, especially MIssissippi, Clower was inescapable.

More Gould

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Somewhere, I have a no-doubt-decaying VHS tape of one of Dana Gould’s early standup specials; it’s some incredibly funny stuff, but I worry it’s become unwatchable. Fortunately, a signficant subset of it is available in his MySpace channel. Check it out, especially if you’re Frank and remember the tape. (No, the commercial bit isn’t included.)

Dept. of Friends of Friends Doing Cool Things

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Years ago, I met FOAF Pascal in a beautiful and terrible bar in the Heathen Homeland. Then, years later, I discovered a fairly rockin’ tool for web development, and it turned out to be written by the same dude. Neato.

Just now, needing a fresh copy of said tool for some web tweaks — I’d lost mine somewhere, and don’t do much web layout work anymore — I discovered Pascal’s new pursuit is an inventive collective-band type thing called Balthrop, Alabama that includes, among others, his sister as well (sometimes) former members of Rainer Maria. From an April notice in the New Yorker, of all things:

April 18: Balthrop, Alabama is an expansive local folk-rock collective led by the singer, songwriter, and guitarist Pascal Balthrop and his sister Lauren, a vocalist and keyboardist. They grew up singing gospel and pop tunes with their family in Mobile, Alabama, and now the pair and their band play paeans to the lovelorn and the droll. The group, whose name is meant to conjure a fictional town in the heart of Dixie (the band members go by aliases), released an impressive début double album, “Your Big Plans & Our Little Town.” Tonight the “townspeople,” including Kyle Fischer, formerly of Rainer Maria, on lap-steel guitar, turn out for a full-blown hootenanny. The group will be accompanied by the artist Michael Arthur, who will be drawing spontaneous ink-based interpretations of the songs. The drawings will be projected onto a screen behind the stage, in the tradition of a “chalk talk,” a lightning-fast drawing act from the days of vaudeville—practiced by such comic-strip luminaries as Winsor McKay (“Little Nemo in Slumberland”)—that was a precursor to animation. The singer Caithlin De Marrais, also formerly of Rainer Maria, opens.

Amusingly, the video (on their web site) for “God Loves My Country” is that same artist drawing as the song is sung, though it’s sped up a bit, so I imagine it captures a bit of the April show’s bizarre fun. Recommended.

Perhaps the coolest watch story I know

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(I think I’d blogged this long ago, but apparently not; its recent resurfacing at MeFi reminds me to do it now.)

During World War II, Rolex extended a fairly amazing offer: British officers detained in German camps could order timepieces on credit, so Clive Nutting ordered one in March of 1943. Nutting was at Stalag Luft III, Sagan, Germany, which is now part of Poland, and — more importantly — was one of the organizers of the Great Escape. Owing to a backlog of orders by other British officers also in German hands, Rolex was unable to fill the order until June, but they acknowledged the order with a letter dated 30 March stating “This watch costs to-day in Switzerland FRs. 250,– but you must not even think of settlement during the war.”

In other words, don’t pay us ’til you get home. How cool is that? (Also, consider a world where POWs could get mail, order watches, etc.)

Nutting got the watch that summer, along with an invoice with a zero balance, and almost certainly used it for timing purposes as they planned the escape. Nutting kept the watch until his death, n 2001, at 90.

Scans of the correspondence with Rolex as well as pictures of the (restored) watch are available at TimeZone, long the best watchgeek site online.

Tab Clearing Omnibus Post

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These are not factory second posts; they’re full quality, and include the usual guarantee. Use as directed:

Dept. of Obsessive but still Awesome

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Let’s say you love pizza. I mean, you really, really love the stuff. But suddenly you move away from your favorite pizza places in NYC, and find yourself in Atlanta, and what’s a guy to do? It goes without saying that non-northeastern ‘Za is simply unacceptable, so clearly you embark on a wild and obsessive pursuit of awesome pizza made at home.

I’m not talking about the shallow end of the pool, either. This guy’s got strong opinions on flour types, on the fermenting of dough, on kneading technique, on blenders, and, most significantly, how to modify your home oven so it’ll go to 800 degrees, since cooking pizza at 475 just won’t cut it.

(Confidential to Mrs Heathen: I remain perfectly happy getting ours from Dolce Vita or Pink’s. I have no need to modify the Jennair.)

How they police in Minnesota

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Last year in their fine snowy state, a SWAT team raided an innocent family’s home unannounced; they threw in flash-bang grenades and ended up in a shooting match with the homeowner, who thought he was being attacked by some armed gang. Fortunately, no one was killed.

Guess what happens if you raid the wrong house and shoot at innocent people in Minnesota? Yep, that’s right: you get a commendation. No one was held accountable at all.

Someone geekier than I about football should comment here

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Football offense is an evolving beast, but perhaps the last major evolutionary step came with Walsh’s “West Coast” quick-short-pass plan, which has since become the de facto standard for the NFL and college and even some high schools. But apparently not at Piedmont High in California, where a combination of factors led two coaches to create something entirely new that involves two quarterbacks and all 11 men carrying the ball.

No, really. They’ve had it reviewed by rules committees, too, and it’s apparently been determined to be legal. And the college coaches are already interested.

There’s a story here, and a whole site about it at A11offense.com.

(Via Kottke.)

Another fine Scalzi smackdown

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Herein, he provides a nice twofer. Mostly, he’s ripping into the conservitards in California who are upset that a state constitutional amendment to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry will be listed on the ballot as a measure to “eliminate the right of same sex couples to marry.”

Yeah, I had to read it twice, too. Apparently, they think it’s “inflammatory.” Go figure; it’s a measure to nullify thousands of currently-legal marriages.

Secondarily, he takes Orson Card — aka fandom’s second-biggest buffoon, behind the inimitable Dave Sim — to task for his singularly obtuse “OMG! TEH GAYS!” anti-gay-marriage editorial. Card’s been a fucking hack for pretty much ever, but his fundie politics have only be public for the last decade or so. The way I see it, the more folks know what a freak he is, the better.

Today’s Needlessly Inflammatory Summary

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“Programmers today are mostly idiots because they’ve only been taught the Java link-a-library cargo-cult development method that’s little more than connect-the-dots.” Discuss.

Note: if you happen to be a non-idiot programmer — which is to say, you actually understand things like pointer math and stacks and interrupts, and you’ve actually written more than a dozen instructions of assembler or, god forbid, machine code, and you’ve actually attempted to work around operating system limitations like “DOS isn’t re-entrant,” and you understand endian concerns, then this development probably means you can command a higher salary and enjoy better job security. As a friend of mine once said, “I love stupid people. They make me look even smarter than I actually am.”

Not only that; sometimes, we just throw shit away without even using it ONE time

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NYT: Houston resists recycling, and independent streak is cited.

While most large American cities have started ambitious recycling programs that have sharply reduced the amount of trash bound for landfills, Houston has not.

The city’s shimmering skyline may wear the label of the world’s energy capital, but deep in Houston’s Dumpsters lies a less glamorous superlative: It is the worst recycler among the United States’ 30 largest cities.

Houston recycles just 2.6 percent of its total waste, according to a study this year by Waste News, a trade magazine. By comparison, San Francisco and New York recycle 69 percent and 34 percent of their waste respectively. Moreover, 25,000 Houston residents have been waiting as long as 10 years to get recycling bins from the city.

Ouch.

The city picks up garbage at some 340,000 households, and fewer than half have recycling bins. About 25,000 households are on the waiting list for the bins, but the city says it cannot afford more bins.

Those without the special bins must cart their recyclable garbage to one of just nine full-service drop-off depots in the city.

But when Monica Pope, a locally renowned chef, approached a city-run recycling depot in her silver pick-up truck full of containers, she was turned away.

“They said my truck was too full,” Ms. Pope recalled, laughing. “There are cultures that just don’t get it, and, unfortunately, Houston is one of them.”

Now, Ms. Pope recycles at what she says is a safer, cleaner and more convenient drop-off center operated by an autonomous city within Houston, saving $6,000 a year in trash fees.

So. Proud. Oh: Unsurprisingly, this story — which quotes our mayor, even — isn’t mentioned at all at our local paper. The Chron is, however, all over the sudden shutdown of hundreds of “Bennigan’s” restaurants, so we have that going for us.

You never heard of him, but he’s dead

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Guitarist Hiram Bullock died yesterday, most likely of throat cancer. He was 52.

You probably have no idea who he was, but it’s just as likely (if not moreso) that you’ve heard his work. Bullock played widely on some pretty serious records throughout his career, including Steely Dan’s “Gaucho,” Sting’s “Nothing Like The Sun” (that’s him soloing during “Little Wing”), and Paul Simon’s “One Trick Pony.” Additionally, Bullock was the original guitarist for Letterman’s — really Schaeffer’s — band on Late Night back in 1982. Over his career, he also played with his share of giants — Miles Davis, Al Jarreau, Pete Townshend, Gil Evans, Clapton, Al Green, and Jaco Pastorious are all on his resume.

Via MeFi. The Letterman link at MeFi — one of many on YouTube — is to a performance on Letterman of a track from his first solo record.

Yer Brane Is Lying To You

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Listen to this, and then listen to it again. The tone will continue to sound like it’s getting higher and higher, when — obviously, since you’re just replaying the same clip — it’s actually exactly the same over and over.

Randy Pausch died.

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Really, I got nothing here. Metafilter has many links.

Actually, I do have something: Jesse goddamn Helms lives to be a wrinkled old racist prune, spreading misery and bigotry from his deathbed, and this guy, this shining example of what a teacher — or just a human — can be checks out at 47. That’s fucking raw.