My last post on a “Christian” blogger named Tim High generated some heat. He put up this post in a feeble attempt to rebut it. The sad thing was, I never said what he claims I said.

If anyone wants to know the definition of a Strawman argument is, Timmy just provided a working example. Notice how much easier it is to argue with Strawman scohen, who said that he values the lives of terrorists more than his family. Did I say that? No, I didn’t, but that doesn’t stop our “Christian” friend from saying I did. Didn’t the bible have something in it about bearing false witness against your neighbor? Nah, couldn’t have been that.

Some people might call this behavior lying. I’m inclined to agree with them.

I read the comments on Amy’s post that I referenced below, and Tim (Highboy on Radar’s blog) said this:

Torture for information is never wrong, especially when that information saves life.

So, aside from torturing people for the sheer sadistic elation you feel as you strap electrodes to their testicles, it’s perfectly fine for the US government to torture people as long as they do it to obtain information. What I think Tim is forgetting in this equation is a little document written around 230 years ago, that has this little tidbit:

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

So, torturing people for information isn’t just illegal, it’s in direct conflict with American values.

Tim likes to chide me for being a liberal, but I have to say that I haven’t compromised my values in the face of 9/11. You see, Tim, the terrorists main weapon is terror. They want you to be afraid, and in his case, they’ve succeeded. He is so scared that he’ll compromise his core American values in order to feel more secure. Tim might call himself a conservative, but what is displayed here is not conservation –it’s weakness.

In America, torture is always wrong, and our founding fathers went through great lengths to make that explicitly clear to us. If you disagree, let’s have that debate –I’d love to have the chance to be against torture while Tim –a self described Christian– will be making the case that tearing out someone’s fingernails is never wrong as long as you merely want information.

It’s a shame we’re not both running for office.

I was reading one of my favorite right-wing blogs, and the latest post had this:

How to treat terrorist detainees in light of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions is being debated in the Senate. Democrats and 3 Republicans (John McCain, John Warner and Lindsey Graham) oppose the President’s plan to provide protection to detainees from torture while allowing military and other personnel to maximize the terrorists’ interrogation experience.

Yeah, we’re not torturing people, we’re merely maximizing their interrogation experience. That kind of double-talk really sets my head spinning, but I’m still against torturing people.
Even terrorists.
Being an American means that we’re going to afford our enemies the same rights we have. We know that they don’t abide by the Geneva Conventions, but we do. Why? Because we have laws that tell us that torture is immoral. It’s written into the document that created this little social experiment of ours. The founders of our country thought it wise to expressly forbid ‘cruel and unusual punishment’, and a case for trashing this hasn’t been made yet. Because of this, we respect human rights –and that those rights apply to everyone, even the slime of the earth.

We’re Americans, dammit, we’re supposed to be the good guys in this, and torturing people makes us not-so-good.

So, Amy, call a spade a spade, it’s torture not “maximizing their interrogation experience” it’s a cruel, degrading and most likely fruitless process, and surprisingly, you’re for it.

Sometimes when I’m bored, I do vanity searches for jUploadr. Usually, I find people saying the same thing: “It’s great”, “It’s easy to use”, “It’s better than the actual Flickr uploadr”, etc. However the last time I searched, I found this, which is a huge pan.

Funny thing is, the guy harps on it being written in Java like he’s some uber geek, and then goes on to complain that it doesn’t support adding to sets or tagging photos. He also complains that jUploadr “expects me to go into preferences and set them (tags)”, then he criticizes it for not being ‘intuitive’.

You know, if you’re going to write a snarky post like that, you might want to actually be *right* first. Over 8000 people have downloaded jUploadr, and everyone else seems to be able to edit tags on photos. How are they accomplishing this complex act? By double-clicking the photo. Is it not intuitive to double-click things? Not to Mr. Techie. Did he just drop his photos into jUploadr, say “this sucks” and close it? It’s not like you have to do some strange incantation to access these supposedly missing features, after all they are clearly shown on jUploadr’s screenshots page. What’s irritating is he was having problems, but rather than sending me an email or posting on jUploadr’s blog, or doing anything productive, he just writes a sarcastic i-am-so-smart blog post and is done with the whole thing.

Look, you can complain that jUploadr isn’t exactly like the Flickr uploadr, but when I wrote it, I hadn’t even seen the their uploader, and now that I have, I’m glad I didn’t replicate its design, which isn’t nearly as powerful as jUploadr’s. Even the Flickr admins steer people toward jUploadr when the default uploader fails them. Do you think they’d do this if jUploadr wasn’t intuitive?

So, my techie self, in the future before writing a snippy little post about how some software fails you, perhaps you should actually check some documentation, or send out an email or *something*, because it’s clear that even my technophobic mom is well ahead of you in technical ability. At least she can double-click.

And *that’s* how to write a snarky post.

Summer is in full swing, and we’re growing tomatoes. This picture was taken about two weeks ago, and since then the tomatoes have grown in size, but they’re still frustratingly green. Why won’t you guys turn red? The anticipation of having home grown tomatoes as opposed to those horrible store-bought things is driving me wild. That and whenever you touch a tomato plant, your hands smell wonderful until you wash them.

Hurry up little guys!

….and this is why you shouldn’t do anything remotely photogenic when there are 50 people around you with digital cameras.

On Sunday, I went for a ride with Paul. We did the typical 92->35 (skyline) -> 84 -> pompano beach route, with a stop at Alice’s for lunch. At the beach, Paul asked if I wanted to switch bikes. I was hesitant at first, after all, he does have a $14,000 motorcycle (MV Agusta Brutale), but he persisted and I accepted. I told him that I’d take it easy on the bike, and he said he’d do the same on my VFR.

As I was waiting to turn out of pompano beach, I was immediately taken at how light the bike was beneath me. The VFR is a porker, and I’ve gotten used to the heft. I was also surprised at how nice my arms looked in the rear view mirrors –that’s all I could see out of them. I think the mirrors on the Brutale are even worse than the mirrors on the 999, so congratulations MV on taking the ‘shittiest mirror placement’ award. It’s nice to know Ducati has such serious competition.

Pulling out onto Highway 1, I noticed something else –you can’t see anything in front of you. No instruments, no lights, no fairing nothing. This took some adjustment for me, as I’m used to at least seeing some gages in front of me, but the Brutale makes you think you’re in wonder woman’s invisible plane. Highway 84 came up much too quickly and as I eased in to the right hand 90 degree turn, I hit a bump. Normally my VFR would absorb the bump and I’d go on, but the Brutale was set up for Paul, who is a fit 30 or so pounds heavier than I am (I’m still 6’1″ and 160). The Brutale bounced me clear out of the seat, immediately, my confidence was shot. In an ideal world, we would have first set the preload on our shocks, but this was a spur of the moment thing — a crazy idea thought up by a madman– and madmen don’t touch preload settings. Needless to say, I wasn’t going to be going at 10/10ths pace and risk turning Paul’s $14k toy into so much pretty wreckage.

Soon enough, the dreaded minivans of doom appeared in front of us, which was actually fortunate because we were still in the sweeper and passing zone section of 84. Time to test out the power –I blipped the bike, snicked down a cog (the shifter was nearly as nice as the viffer’s), and totally blew the shift. The MV’s engine revs much faster than the VFR’s and I overshot my mark. No matter, I was in a lower gear and accumulating massive speed as I blasted around the minivan. Paul was right behind me or at least as far as I can tell, the mirrors were quite buzzy, so all I could see was a blur of lights and red.

We were rapidly approaching the twisty bits, and route 84 with its mountain hugging switchbacks and generally impeccable road surface ranks among my favorite roads in the area. I’m no fan of in-line fours, but the MV had enough power at every RPM range that it didn’t feel like I had to work too hard to keep the engine on the boil. I also got better and better at blipping the thing –it’s really great to only have to make slight movements with the wrist and –ka-snick– I’m in a lower gear. I also got to slide around the bike a little bit, which on the MV is pretty tough. This is a bike that you sit in, not on, and I’ve never been comfortable with that. However, it forgave my amateurish movements (for the most part, I missed a line here and there) and the throttle seemed hard wired into my brain. The throttle was dead accurate, and allowed you to scrub speed with absolute precision. You could tell some Italian engineer worked many late nights on the fuel injection.

We caught up with traffic on the best part of the road (that always happens!) and 84 was over. The biggest problem with the MV is that it attracts attention. As we passed Alice’s Paul tells me that people were pointing. Heading back on Skyline (not my favorite road, BTW) the MV performed admirably, but I was getting cold. It was extremely windy up there and that was killing my confidence yet I still managed to make a couple good turns and hit some admirable lines. I wouldn’t call the MV confidence inspiring, but instead consider it an effective tool. The freeway ride home was less fun. My right knee started cramping up and I felt like a spinnaker with no fairing to protect me from the winds of freeway riding. I lost Paul for a bit, but when I merged back on to 101, the familiar red and bright blur was back in my mirrors. I downshifted from 6th to 2nd on the off ramp and was greeted with some inspiring machine music. I heard the familiar gear whine of the VFR behind me as well as the overly throaty exhaust, and knew Paul was still there. Fun times indeed.

Oh, and the D&D reference? That’s what Paul put on the license plate holder (click the picture for more)

Well, according to Radar it’s not; you see, all of its “glory” is gone. Indianapolis, on the other hand is chock full of glory. Fundamentalists are strange people indeed.

I’m also not sure how a world class city doesn’t have traffic. World-Class and heavy traffic seem pretty synonymous to me. What’s really tragic is he lives within 50 miles of Chicago, but he favors Indianapolis. That’s a shame, because Chicago is a fantastic city with global reach. Indianapolis is slightly safer than Chicago, but it’s nowhere near as safe as old no-more-glory.

He must think “Glory” means assaults.

I think I cracked his code.

Nikki introduced me to Burma Superstar a couple of months ago. I’ve never had Burmese food, but it’s like a combination of Indian and Thai –and it’s delicious. One of my favorite things to get is the beer cooler, which is a refreshing summer drink. I did a little experimentation, and came up with a reasonable approximation, which I will share with the world. So, without further delay, here it is, the recipe for Burmese Beer coolers.

For each 12 oz of beer, add:
2 tbsp. Sugar
The juice from one lemon (pulp optional)
1/4 tsp freshly grated ginger

The cooler is very sensitive to which beer you use. You’ll want something that has no chance of being ‘skunky’ –a skunky beer makes the cooler taste like vomit. I tried Pilsner Urquell, but that caused the vomit smell –Heineken and rolling rock are also out. I went with Corona Extra and that seemed to work just fine, but you should be able to get away with any non-smelly light tasting pilsner. First add the sugar, which not only sweetens the drink, but removes a lot of the bubbles. Then grate the ginger with a micro-plane grater (anything else will leave the ginger very stringy). Add the ginger, then the lemon juice (you may filter the juice if you don’t like pulp. The drink at Superstar has a little pulp in it). Stir until all ingredients are mixed and the bubbles go down. Refrigerate and serve. This drink is best served very cold.

I don’t usually blog about work, but when the New York Times does a piece about your company how can you not be a little proud? What’s more, they give a lot of press to our strategy, which seems to be gaining industry momentum. Exciting stuff, to be sure.

Go Dchoc!