I don't hate people, but I hate you.

Several misguided souls (or "dipshits", as we say in the business) keep posting comment spam on this site. I know this is a common thing now, but it's a pain in the butt. And Movable Type's interface makes it incredibly tedious to delete comments. (A list of the last several hundred posted comments, with checkboxes next to them, and a button to delete all checked comments, would be dandy.) Sigh.

The Spine

I really like They Might Be Giants' new album, The Spine. Their most recent album was a kids album, No!. That album turned out to be a big hit with Emma, so I can't really complain about it, but it made me worry that TMBG would abandon their more adult fare. (Their stuff has never been scandalous or obscene, but it ranged freely through all sorts of subject matter. No! is tame--almost uninterestingly so.) The Spine shows that I needn't worry.

There are several gems, and I need a few more listens before I absorb the bulk of it. My favorite so far is "Bastard wants to hit me", a strangely warbled, paranoid-yet-perky piece in which the speaker is convinced that the stranger over there, waving to me, wants me to come over so he can hit me.

AIDS Walk San Francisco 2004

I took part in Aids Walk San Francisco on Sunday. I was part of the Pixar team, though I ended up walking alone, at first afloat in the river of 21,000 people surging slowly through Golden Gate Park, later fighting the current to find my own faster pace. The weather was perfect--a bit foggy but pleasantly cool. And there are worse places to walk than Golden Gate Park, passing the occasional band, orchestra, or dancing troupe set up alongside the river of people.

It's been a while since I've been in a throng, and I've never been in one this big, let alone one this big and happy. It was a great experience. Many thanks to those who sponsored me on the walk.

Slip the surly bonds of simulated Earth.

The other day I bought a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight. My interest in flight simulators ran out somewhere in high school, but reappeared unexpectedly a week or two ago. In part, this is because it occured to me that the relevant technology has improved by a factor of several hundred since I last ran one. FS2004 has clouds, dynamic weather (updated every fifteen minutes from the web!), and fairly detailed geography for the entire planet, including 24,000 airports.

Playing it has also made me realize that I knew nothing about flying. Well, not nothing--I could fumble through the sky the moment I started it--but the built-in training program introduced me to the foreign concepts of coordinated turns and control surface trim--both rudimentary aspects of flight. ("Wait, you're telling me that Wing Commander isn't realistic?")

What's worse, my sudden interest in the subtleties of flight have me eyeing sim-geek accoutrements such as high-end yokes and scenery add-ons. Let's hope I get over this before I start buying add-ons for random aircraft.

Review: Fahrenheit 9/11

I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 a week ago, but never got around to commenting here. As markv says, it's hard to do the film justice, so please see it if you haven't. Here's my take:

Fahrenheit 9/11 is propaganda. It doesn't try to be fair, and it doesn't pull any punches. It's also not easy to watch. Watching it, though, you do get the feeling that something big and new is going on. It's not the war itself, or the politics surrounding it--we've sort of become inured to those. It's not even the Bush Administration Conspiracy Theory on which the film is based. Whether or not you buy into it, we've all heard tell of sinister motives in high places. The big and new thing is, instead, an escalation of the dialogue surrounding the war.

The sentiments in Fahrenheit 9/11 are familiar--a lot of us have been opposed to the war from the start. The "revelations" in the film are also not new, at least to anybody who reads more than the front page. But the beauty and the horror of the presentation, and (it turns out) the scope of the audience it's reaching, are stunning. Considering the impact this film could have in this election year, I would be surprised if similar, opposing films didn't appear--and soon. For better or worse, the gloves have come off.

It remains to be seen if anybody can muster a suitable response. Moore is an incredible filmmaker. If Bowling for Columbine didn't show that, then this film certainly does. In it, Moore paints a picture of a crooked, manipulative, violent administration. He paints it almost entirely with the words and images of others, but especially with those of the administration itself. The funny, the ghastly, and the infuriating alternate and then blur together. He paints a vivid picture.

There are parts of Moore's painting that I believe, and parts that I don't. But the administration has its own painting, which it has fed to us in pieces for several years. Of all the stories I've heard, the official one is the least believable. If this film accomplishes anything, I hope it reminds people that there are other, often more plausible interpretations than the ones we're given.

Gophers 15, Tom 1.

Gophers have been tearing up our lawn, back near Emma's swingset. Almost every day a new mound of dirt appears. (Gophers like to come to the surface but can't stand to have openings into their domain. They religiously fill in any openings when they're done with them.)

I tried a silly electronic repellant stake, even though people told me they don't work. Turns out they don't work.

Then, on Saturday, Meliisa noticed that the gopher(s) had left a hole open. Ed (her father,visiting for the week) and I pounced on the oppurtunity, bringing out the vicious little macabee traps I'd bought for just such an occasion. As we fumbled with the traps, I saw dirt moving--the gopher was trying to fill in the opening as we stood there! We redoubled our efforts, keeping the tunnel open with a garden spade as we frantically fiddled with the traps.

Once placed, the traps were triggered several times by dirt being pushed upward by the gopher. Twice it seemed we'd caught him, but each time he escaped. As night fell, I filled in all but one hole, and left only one trap active.

In the morning, that trap held one big, dead gopher. Though intellectually I know there are probably more, I choose to believe that we've solved the problem. Let me have my victory.

If you have a gopher problem and, like me, have lost all empathy for the little bastards, I can definitely recommend the macabee traps.

With ties to the moon, via the gravitational field.

And speaking of politics--If I hear the phrase "with ties to Al Qaeda" one more time, I'll scream. I felt this way even before the recent 9/11 Commission conclusion that Saddam and Al Qaeda weren't connected. It's clear that, for the last couple years, "with ties to Al Qaeda" has been shorthand for "to the extent that you're afraid of Al Qaeda, please be afraid of these guys too". I don't doubt that most terrorist groups have ties to other terrorist groups, but every time I hear the unsubstantiated phrase, I'm pretty sure that my intelligence is being insulted, and it makes me feel less inclined to trust the speaker.

Makes me feel like this.