The Red Brick Times

Here's a picture of the planetary alignment that will be visible for a little while yet. Hold your mouse over the picture and a pop-up will identify what to look for.
Posted 3:05 PM by whatley 0 comments

The annual FOWL picnic will be Sunday, June 9th. The Wheelers have welcomed us back again. I hope you can plan to attend the third FOWL picnic and jamboree. There will be details and tickets in the next (probably May) newsletter.. Renew acquaintances, make new ones. It will be great to see you there!
Posted 6:28 AM by Ray Stewart 0 comments

Think your vote matters? How to rig an election. This means that some senatorial whore can introduce a bill for his fat cat contributors that will legalize spyware and not worry about any consequences.
Posted 1:59 PM by whatley 0 comments

I'll buy a beer for whomever can think up the most inovative use for this. (yes, I've already thought of one and yes, it's disgusting)
Posted 10:55 AM by whatley 0 comments

Librarians to the rescue! Fiat Lux: A Yahoo with values and a brain.

Another interesting techy read is this essay on "hacktivism" called Waging Peace on the Internet by cDc (cult of the Dead cow).
Posted 9:54 AM by whatley 0 comments

Along the lines of "those who can't.... teach." My Westwood Chime Choir is to march and play in the Memorial Day Parade in Elyria. Heck, I can't march and play at the same time, but they are giving it their best shot. How DO you get them to remember which is their LEFT foot?

Sally
Posted 6:21 PM by Sally D. 0 comments

The Trailer/Body Builder magazine reports that automotive "black boxes" are beginning development. As we have commented before, this will be both good and bad. It spells a change for driving from psychological expression of freedom and power and prowess to merely an act of transportation. But as crowding on non-expanding highway systems increases and competence of non-trained operators decreases, the meaning of protection of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is not to be found by the nut loose behind the steering wheel. So be good for goodness' sake:

"Black box" standards in the works

Online Exclusive, Apr 17 2002

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Assn. (IEEE-SA) has begun working to create the first universal standard for motor vehicle event data recorders (MVEDR), which are more commonly known as "black boxes." Much like the black boxes used on commercial aircraft, MVEDRs would perform the same function in both automobiles and trucks, recording crash data to help improve vehicle safety.

IEEE said its black box standards project brings together industry and government experts to formulate a minimum performance protocol for the use of onboard tamper- and crash-proof memory devices for all types and classes of highway and roadway vehicles. This international standard would help manufacturers develop black boxes for automobiles, trucks, buses, ambulances, fire trucks and other vehicles.

The MVEDR standard will define what data should be captured, including date, time, location, velocity, heading, number of occupants and seat belt use. It will also define how that information should be obtained, recorded and transmitted.

"The more accurate the data we gather on highway crashes, the better chance we have to reduce the devastating effects of crashes," said Jim Hall, co-chair of the IEEE P1616 working group and former head of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

Hall added that the IEEE P1616 project builds on more than a decade of ongoing MVEDR research. It will draw on studies conducted by DOT, NHTSA, FMCSA, FHWA and the Transportation Research Board, along with research done by car, truck and bus manufacturers.


© 2002, PRIMEDIA Business Magazines & Media Inc. All rights reserved.
Posted 12:04 PM by Andy Allan 0 comments

Tony, I bookmarked http://www.7393.org and it followed the changes, if any. Now that you mention it, I am not sure where to look to get the underlying IP address by the numbers while on-line with the site.
Posted 2:22 PM by Andy Allan 0 comments

Russ- I seem to be trapped in computer prison. I can access Blogger to post, but I cannot bring up the RBT page. Is there a new URL or what. The URL I have on file is http://216.118.112.190/ yes/no?
Posted 6:10 PM by A. O. Gutierrez 0 comments

MEMRI: The Middle East Media Research Institute "The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) explores the Middle East through the region's media. MEMRI bridges the language gap which exists between the West and the Middle East, providing timely translations of Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew media, as well as original analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends in the Middle East."
Reading direct translations of Middle Eastern media is certainly thought provoking and even a bit shocking at first, especially when you realize that most of the media there is state sponsored. Does the intended audience look at media the same way we do? I hope not. Be sure to check out the cartoons.

If "thought provoking" is not your cup of tea today here's a new golf game for ya.
Posted 8:16 AM by whatley 0 comments

And now for something completely smarmy: Alaska drilling supporters to include Israeli aid in bill.
Posted 9:57 AM by whatley 0 comments

I don't know if you were waiting for me to say something but it's ok to post again (and has been since I was posting repair updates on 4/15) so please have at it. I'll keep you informed about getting the lost comments back.
Speaking of comments how 'bout getting back into the swing by commenting on my 4/11 post? I like to know what you think.
Posted 8:56 AM by whatley 0 comments

I've been getting some emails from RBT'ers who don't quite understand what happened to the ol' blog this weekend. I thought I explained everything in the post below but maybe not well enough so here goes:

1) There is not now nor has there been any issues with Blogger itself. The Blogger site does not store our pages, posts or comments. We use their system as a convenience to do our posting and nothing else. (I'm simplefying a bit. They do have a utility that helped me rebuild all of our posts this morning.)

2) The "Comment" system is working fine and dandy. It operates by creating a unique file for each post that has a comment and stores that file in a directory that I specify. When more comments are added for a specific post it appends them to the aforementioned file making it a bit larger. If a specific comment file is somehow deleted then the comments on that post disappear. See below.

3) The RBT pages, comment files, email etc. is actually stored on a web server at a webhosting company, in our case Aletia.com. We pay for this service. Aletia had a major system failure on one of their webservers and, just our luck, it was the one all of our files existed on. They spent the weekend salvaging what they could and moving all affected accounts and files to a new server, not a small task. Apparently some files were permanently lost. A good portion of our "Comment" files may be among those, especially files created from late March on. I'm working with them to resolve the issue and save as much as possible but it all depends on what they can salvage from the fried webserver and what they have on backup tapes.

I'm very unhappy to find out that a professional hosting service like Aletia does not do nightly backups of its servers. Needless to say I'm investigating the prices/options of other webhosting services.

P.S. I won't be at work tomorrow so don't send emails to the seblue address. Others here will have access to that mailbox so they can retrieve work related items if necessary.
Posted 1:19 PM by whatley 0 comments

Our hosting provider has indeed had a major system failure starting sometime early Friday morning. We've been moved to a new server at their location but as you can see certain data was lost, mostly in the "comments" directory. I don't yet know the full extent of the damage. It's taken me 20 or so minutes this morning to restore basic posting capability. I'll work on full functionality as I get time. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Update: The comment feature is now functioning. Though some exist, especially in old archives, most former comments seem to be missing (FYI: Each posts' comments are saved in an file unique to that post. If the file is gone....) I'll continue to work with our hosting provider to restore more of these files if possible.

Update: If you use a 7393.org email address your mail is functioning. Some, if not all, of your sent/saved mail has been restored. You will have to reset your preferences.
Posted 8:19 AM by whatley 0 comments

We seem to have lost some of our group memory due to a Blogger outage on Friday and Saturday. It appears that Blogger pulled out some archive tapes and re-started in the past. Like I saw in a cartoon recently, the secret to time travel appears to be the Internet. The postings through 4/11/02 still show up in the Blogger, but the RBT site has no comment threads and does not show the most recent contributions to our universe. What does the RBT-Meister conclude?
Posted 11:12 AM by Andy Allan 0 comments

While we wait to see how the concept of a topic page (see post below) resolves itself here are two other ideas I've been considering. One is adding an "events" menu item that would link to a page listing upcomming gatherings and such. This would be a static page (you send me info and I add it). Things like the FOWL picnic, solstices, RBT road trips, maybe Strang would like me to list Civil War re-enactments he's involved in. Whatever.

Second, should I ever get the time, is a re-design for the RBT. We've had this look for a while now. That started me wishing I had some exteriour photos of the ol' schoolhouse to maybe incorporate into the design and that started me thinking about a photo page. Pictures of us in the 70's, maybe solstice through the years, who knows what all? Catch is I don't have any. If you do then scan a choice selection at 200dpi (if you don't have a scanner any Kinko's or Office Max can do it) then email them to me, or loan me the originals and I'll scan them. Interested?
Posted 11:47 AM by whatley 0 comments

Egad! I haven't seen RBT discussion threads like these since, ....well, ....never! I think we can consider our comment utility officially stress-tested. Cool. One thing I did notice is that the same topic (more or less) was running in threads under three different posts. Tony and I started remarking on that in the comments under his post of Friday, April 5th, and began to kick around a few ideas about how to make discussions of this type more seamless. Tony's last comment had some interesting ideas, one of which was to enable linking between separate items running in different comment threads (I hope I got that right). Neato idea but not possible within the format we're using without each person being able to write some javascript on the fly within their comment. Ugh, that's too techy even for me. Another idea was to make a second RBT blog dedicated to one topic each month (or whatever). Topics could be suggested and then voted on maybe? No off-topic post would be allowed on this page. It probably wouldn't have a comment feature at all because every post would be in relation to others within the topic anyway. Please chime in with a yea or nay on whether you think this, or something akin to it, is worth investigating further (I don't want to waste time on this if nobodys interested in using it). If you feel like suggesting other scenarios all the better.
Posted 10:25 AM by whatley 0 comments

It has obviously been sometime since I have visited. I missed the beginning of the thread begun by Ray but have now tried to caught up. So my 2 cents worth.

Ray's questions:
If there were justice in this world, would there be terrorists?

Unfortunately I imagine the answer would be yes.

First, it is too easy to confuse those with legimate struggles against oppression with others who sole goal is the power to impose their will on others. Which leads to the old conundrum," What the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter?"

Second, to ask if there would be terrorists if there were:
* freedom (tricky to define),
* equity (still trickier),
* tolerance,
* opportunity (to do what?),
* education (don't confusion schooling with education),
* well-fed populaces, and
* humane treatment (I presume by those in a position to direct treatment)
rests on a couple (or more) assumptions:

1) Satisfaction of basic needs leads to enlightened behavior or at minimum removes animalistic motivation.
2) Humanity and the valuing of humanity is an innate characteristic of the unoppressed. Which would seem to lead to an assumption that people have an innate 'better nature'. Though cynical I lean towards: When seeking to influence others don't appeal to their better nature, they may not have one. Invoking their self-interest gives you more leverage. (sort of Niechtze meets Adam Smith)

Will there always be some among us who crave power, who are so convinced that their world view or religious conviction is the only right way and it MUST be followed or all are doomed, whose conviction that their economic way or political culture is right for everyone, everywhere, at all times?. Sadly yes.

Take for instance 'freedom'. From the view that founded this country and much of western Europe, freedom is defined as a lack of restriction of personal choice with minimal restriction imposed by the group beyond those necessary for the common peace. Interpersonal responsibilty is a matter of individual conscience and cannot, will not be imposed.

On the other hand, freedom can be defined as a lack of deprivation. Freedom from hunger, homelessness, access to education, etc where the group bears responsibility of provide subsistence provisions without requiring any form of contribution as a prerequisite. Interpersonal responsibility is a matter group conscience and exists without need of justification.

This first is the foundation of our political and economic systems. The second was/is the foundation of Marxist economic and cultural expression. While the latter is noble the former has consistently triumphed which leads me back to "When seeking to influence others don't appeal to their better nature, they may not have one. Invoking their self-interest gives you more leverage." and the sad conclusion that terrorism (as opposed to resisting oppression) is as innate as hair follicles, as ubiquitous as opinion, and as inescapeable as death itself.
Posted 5:12 PM by John Eichenlaub 0 comments

I know I'm usually viewed as as being mild mannered and conciliatory, but I'm goning to go out on a limb here and risk being inflammatory. There's a post from March 24 by Ray Stewart posing a sequence of questions that should be discussed, but the discussion seems a little thin. Andy posted a statement regarding Ray's questions that I took to be complete prejudiced blather and said so. Just as the dicussion seemed about to get going it appears to have ended. I feel this site is THE place where we should be able to help each other sort out the confusions of life instead of simply applauding our pronouncements on this or that subject. I'm not talking about win/lose debate but the actual philosophic function of honest conversation to assist us in examining our assumptions and presumptions. Am I alone in thinking that we may be missing an opportunity here?
Posted 1:26 AM by A. O. Gutierrez 0 comments

Space News: "Inching across the sky like bumper-to-bumper commuters on their way to work, a rare planetary alignment will allow sky observers to see every planet in our solar system in a single evening!"

Hmm..... Anybody own a telescope?
Posted 2:11 PM by whatley 0 comments

Get ready for advertisers to take over your Web browser. "Beware, Web surfers. Soon not even that dull, gray toolbar at the top of your Internet browser will be safe from advertisers."
Posted 8:03 AM by whatley 0 comments

A little something to get your April Fools Day creative juices flowing; The Museum of Hoaxes
Posted 8:22 AM by whatley 0 comments