Events

Letter to the Chicago Tribune: The August 24th editorial on the Chicago City Council implies that the Council's recent actions, including its enacting a ban on the sale of foie gras, are paternalistic: the Council is "meddlin'," a "bossy governess," a bunch of "scolds"; its decisions are "petty intrusions in people's lives." All of those words and phrases describe paternalistic actions; that is, actions whose purpose is to save people from themselves. The foie gras ban is intended to save geese from...

First, I promise to take some photos today. Possibly I can convince Anne to take an action shot or two, which I will post, forgetting for a moment that no one—I mean, no one—can possibly avoid looking like a total dork while wearing bike gear. Second, I've revised and moved my biking stats page. I thought it was only fair to split off my old bike's records into their own table, because my new bike is so much faster it just wouldn't be fair. Case in point: yesterday, I did 40 km (25 mi) along the...

That is all.

My dad's oldest cat died Tuesday night. He was 18 1/2. Here's Tommy in 1997: He was the sweetest cat ever. Not the brightest (we called him "Forrest") nor the slimmest ("Tommy Two-Cats"), but definitely the sweetest. Tom is survived by his best friend, Reggie.

Bruce Schneier reminds everyone how we can really defeat the terrorists: The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of...

I was going to have action shots of my new bike this morning, but I decided to take the bus to my office instead of riding for some reason: I'll have more on the bike later, including the results of my first real ride on it (whee!), but right now I have to crunch a few million data points. I'm also suffering from the after-effects of a midnight inspiration last night, which (a) led to two hours of coding starting at 1:00 am, and (b) got the total speed of the application up 40%.

First, I picked up my new bike yesterday. But that's not the subject of this post. No, the unfortunate real subject of this post is, "I am stupid." I had to import about 3.5 million data points recently, and now that I'm using the data, I discovered that this quick-and-dirty construct was dirtier than it was quick. See if you can spot the problem: const string sqlTemplate = "INSERT INTO data_points (foreign_key_id,year_num,payment,cost) VALUES ({0},{1},{2},{3})"; ... foreach (CustomStruct item in...

I picked out my new bicycle. I pick it up Wednesday. Photos and details to follow.

Today I pedaled my butt off, all the way up to Wisconsin: The total ride was 130 km (80.8 mi). I had intended only to go 120 km (74.5 mi) to prepare for the North Shore Century in four weeks. But, I took a wrong turn somewhere in North Chicago, and lost the Robert McClory Bike Path entirely. That added about 6 km (4 mi) to the trip. Another 4 km (2.5 mi) got added on when I popped a spoke in the middle of nowhere: Fortunately, Anne was home and directed me to the Zion Cyclery, and they had me back on...

As channeled through American Prospect columnist Julian Sanchez: August 11: My anger at The New York Times subsides somewhat as I skim Foucault and Sartre. Surveillance serves its disciplinary function only if the populace is conscious of it. And if Americans aren't wrenched from being-pour-soi to being-en-soi (at least in relation to an observer who is Other) by the objectifying gaze of the state—well, then the terrorists have won. Read more.