Ethel the Blog
Observations (and occasional brash opining) on science, computers, books, music and other shiny things that catch my mind's eye. There's a home page with ostensibly more permanent stuff. This is intended to be more functional than decorative. I neither intend nor want to surf on the bleeding edge, keep it real, redefine journalism or attract nyphomaniacal groupies (well, maybe a wee bit of the latter). The occasional cheap laugh, raised eyebrow or provocation of interest are all I'll plead guilty to in the matter of intent. Bene qui latuit bene vixit.

The usual copyright stuff applies, but I probably won't get enraged until I find a clone site with absolutely no attribution (which, by the way, has happened twice with some of my other stuff). Finally, if anyone's offended by anything on this site then please do notify me immediately. I like to keep track of those times when I get something right.

How to blog? METABLOGGING Blog Madness Blog Portal linkwatcher Monitor BLOGS (YMMV) abuddhas memes alamut apathy arms and the man baghdad burning bifurcated rivets big left outside boing boing booknotes bovine inversus bradlands bushwacker camworld cheek chess log cogent provocateur cool tools counterspin crooked timber delong digby drat fink drmike d-squared dumbmonkey electrolite eschaton estimated prophet ezrael fat planet flutterby! follow me here geegaw genehack ghost glare gmtplus9 hack the planet harmful hauser report hell for halliburton honeyguide hotsy totsy club juan cole kestrel's nest k marx the spot kuro5hin lake effect lambda large hearted boy leftbanker looka looking glass macleod maxspeak medley memepool metagrrrl mike's monkeyfist more like this mouse farts my dog norbizness off the kuff orcinus pandagon pedantry peterme philosoraptor pith and vinegar plastic portage q quark soup quiggin randomwalks rip post rittenhouse see the forest shadow o' hegemon sideshow simcoe south knox bubba slacktivist smudge submerging markets sylloge synthetic zero talking points tbogg twernt unknownnews vacuum vanitysite virulent memes whiskey bar windowseat tv wood s lot TECH Librenix use perl rootprompt slashdot freshmeat Ars Technica 32BitsOnline UGeek AnandTech Linux Today Tom's Hardware DevShed

"When they say, 'Gee it's an information explosion!', no, it's not an explosion, it's a disgorgement of the bowels is what it is. Every idiotic thing that anybody could possibly write or say or think can get into the body politic now, where before things would have to have some merit to go through the publishing routine, now, ANYTHING." - Harlan Ellison JOLLY OLD PALS Other stuff of mild interest to some: unusual literature scientific software blog physical oceanography glossary computer-related tutorials and texts Wednesday, January 26, 2000 GOOD DECISION Marvelous! The Jan. 18 issue of EOS tells me that AGU has decided to "adopt LaTeX as its format for electronic publications." They're also "committed to developing the ability to accept other popular formats in the future as it becomes economical to do so", although they indicate it may not be a free service. While they've adopted LaTeX for manuscript submissions, they've adopted SGML for archiving electronic journals. It's relatively easy to convert from LaTeX to SGML (since the latter was influenced by the former), and it can be done with mostly freely available tools. I salute this decision. They could have gone the ostensibly easier Word/RTF route, but that would not only cost more for software (given the prediliction of some companies for introducing new versions that are not much more than bloatware), it would also cause backward compatibility to suffer (I've yet to be unable to process any LaTeX file because a new version added features that weren't backwards compatible, while some companies nudge their "standards" with each new and unimproved release such that you have to buy their new version to read documents created with it). The vastly improved Lyx makes this an even easier decision (although I'm not sure if they considered it). Those who just can't get through life without their magical WYSIWYG software can use Lyx to create documents in LaTeX format. Okay, it's only quasi-WYSIWYG since it doesn't show the equations quite right, but it can automatically churn out a PostScript version that can be viewed to peruse and correct the equations. I don't think the onerous extra effort of having to go that one additional step will kill any scientist who's already gone through the effort of researching and writing the paper. There's also the additional bonus of being able to use LaTeX to HTML translators like LaTeX2HTML, TTH, HEVEA or Ltoh to present work originally done in LaTeX format as HTML on the Web. I've been using the first for over 5 years. Kudos to Donald Knuth, Leslie Lamport and the many others who've developed these fine tools over the years. posted by Steven Baum 1/26/2000 09:30:37 AM | link STRANGE LIT Myrick Land's The Fine Art of Literary Mayhem: A Lively Account of Famous Writers and Their Feuds (1983) is a most entertaining read. The feuds covered in the chapters of this revised edition of a book originally published in 1963 include Sam Johnson vs. everyone (especially Lord Chesterfield), Alexander Pope vs. Colley Cibber, Fedor Doestoevski vs. Ivan Turgenev, William Makepeace Thackery vs. Charles Dickens, H. G. Wells vs. Henry James, D. H. Lawrence vs. everyone, Horace Walpole vs. Somerset Maugham, Ernest Hemingway vs. everyone, Bernard DeVoto vs. Sinclair Lewis, and Norman Mailer vs. everyone. One might expect those who make their livings writing to be good at hurling invective in print, and one wouldn't be disappointed. The introductory chapter offers many a fine example of critical daggers slipped into the backs of more than a few famous authors (although none which led to the historically memorable feuds detailed in the later chapters). For instance, a review of Dreiser's An American Tragedy offered: The commonplaces of the story is not alleviated in the slightest degree by any glimmer of imaginative insight on the part of the novelist. Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was ingloriously greeted with: What has never been alive cannot very well go on living, so this is a book of the season only. Even so timeless a classic as Milton's Paradise Lost was kneed in the groin via Edmund Waller's If its length be not considered a merit, it hath no other. Other literary critics haven't been as kindly subtle, with Shelley's Prometheus Unbound being taken into an alley and administered the following beating: It is of little else but absolute raving, and were we not assured to the contrary, we would take it for granted that the author was a lunatic - as his principles are ludicrously wicked, and his poetry a melange of nonsense ... the stupid trash of a delirious dreamer ... maniacal raving. Max Beerbohm felt compelled to attack Kipling in print, even penning a parody of Kipling containing the following: "Wot am I? A bloomin' cypher. Wot's the sarjint? E's got the Inspector over 'im. Over and above the Inspector there's the Sooperintendent. Over above 'im's the old red-tape-masticatin' Yard. Over above that there's the 'Ome Sec. Wot's 'e? A cypher, like me. Why?" Judlip looked up at the stars. "Over above 'im's We Dunno Wot..." I'll be relating the details of some of the juicier chapters as I get around to it. posted by Steven Baum 1/26/2000 09:20:54 AM | link Tuesday, January 25, 2000 LINUX Aureal has released Linux drivers for their Vortex PCI sound chip products. The relevant details include: support for all cards based on the Vortex1 (Au8820), Vortex2 (Au8830) and Vortex Advantage (Au8810) chip sets, e.g. the Turtle Beach Montego A3D and A3D II cards and the Diamond Multimedia Monster Sound (original, M80, MX200 and MX300) and Sonic Impact S90 cards; support for Linux Intel x86 systems with kernel versions 2.2.5 or later; the hardware synthesis device /dev/sequencer is unsupported; support for legacy joysticks at port 0x201 as well as for the standard Linux joystick driver; planned support for SPDIF, EQ, tone control and quad output; planned support for A3D in the core chipset drivers (in addition to a planned port of the A3D 3.0 audio engine to Linux); The current distribution contains source and object files, with access to the Vortex hardware provided by the latter and to the Linux kernel by the former. A full source distribution including chip documentation is in the works. posted by Steven Baum 1/25/2000 10:12:27 AM | link METALINKS Another round of short pointers to and from elsewhere. Cambridge History of English and American Literature, an encyclopedia in 18 volumes originally published from 1907-1921 (via memepool) Tapirs (via mike's weblog) The Top UNIX Moments of the Century (via Scribble) Bad Movies (via misterpants) Inside U.S. Counterinsurgency: A Soldier Speaks (via abuddhas memes) Black and White Photographs from the FSA-OWI, in the context of having fascinatingly gazed at family history photographs up to 110 years old during the holidays, including one of a grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary in 1962 at which I was the youngest participant among about 70 (via MandoMonger Farm) posted by Steven Baum 1/25/2000 09:09:56 AM | link Monday, January 24, 2000 THE MISSING 18 1/2 MINUTES An internal memo of the National Archives reveals that they're interested in taking another crack at finding out what was on the 18 1/2 minute gap on one of Richard Nixon's tapes recorded three days after the Watergate break-in. The content of those missing minutes is probably the single biggest mystery produced by the entire Watergate affair other than what the burglars were really trying to find out. The contents of the National Archives memo include: We are interested in examining the possibility of retesting the 18 1/2 -minute gap in the Watergate tapes to ascertain whether or not there is any recoverable conversation. All of us believe it is doubtful there is anything recoverable, but the last testing of the `gap' occurred in the late '70s. The gap was said by Nixon's secretary Rose Mary Woods to have accidentally been created when a phone rang during a transcription session and she pushed a wrong button, accidentally recording over a section of the original conversation. A later analysis of the tapes concluded that the erasure had been done in somewhere between 5 and 9 separate and contiguous segments. Although there is some hope that recently developed software and hardware can reveal the content of the missing minutes, some who have examined the tapes are convinced that nothing can be recovered, even if the tape were available in its original condition and not over 25 years old. Here at EthelCo Labs we've skipped the niceties and difficulties of doing real work to solve the mystery. We've chosen instead to use those countless precious nanoseconds to engage in half-assed speculations as to their content. Some possible phrases we've reconstructed via this method include: "... so shut the hell up and put on that leather bra, Henry!" "...on our knees in prayer. 'Dear God, another week like this and I'm putting you on the damned list!'" "Why don't Rowan and Martin answer my calls! Those ingrateful Hollywood kikes really chap my..." "...now here's how I prove that bastard Lincoln was wrong..." "...a quick runthrough of 'We Shall Overcome' gentlemen." "...but those wolves sure as hell can't accuse me of 'lust' and 'sloth'!" "...what the hell would Brian Boitano do?" posted by Steven Baum 1/24/2000 02:36:22 PM | link

Comments? Archive LISTS Books Software uPORTALS cider crime lit drive-in fake lit hurricanes os scripting sherlock texas music top 100 weirdsounds wodehouse LEISURE abebooks alibris amazon bibliofind bookfinder hamilton powells all music guide best used cds cd bargains second spin raven's links ampol arts & letters atlantic art history attrition bibliomania bitch bizarre bizarro bloom country bob 'n' ed bob the angry flower callahan chile pepper classical music cnnsi crackbaby cult films culture jamming discover disinformation dismal scientist electric sheep espn exquisite corpse feed fine cooking fishbowl fluble fried society fry and laurie hotel fred hotendotey hypocrisy network jerkcity last cereal leisure town logos london times mappa mundi miscmedia mp3lit mr. chuck show mr. serpent national geographic new scientist no depression not bored obscure store onion on-line books parking lot is full pearly gates phrase and fable probe red meat rough guides salon Simpleton sluggy freelance spacemoose spike straight dope strenua inertia suck superosity tawdry town too much coffee man toon inn verbivore vidal index yes minister you damn kid