Stephan Zielinski: Dwa

These are fairly high resolution, just in case the mood takes you to use one as part of a screen saver or wallpaper.  Hence, they’ll be a bit slow to load.

Illicit fireworks, San Francisco Mission 2007 July 4

21 Photos

The 38th San Francisco Pride Parade took place on June 24th, 2007.

San Francisco Pride 2007

46 Photos

The parade for San Francisco’s 29th Carnaval took place on May 27, 2007.

San Francisco Carnaval 2007

38 Photos

These are from downtown San Francisco, May 25th, 2007.

Zombies attack San Francisco

38 Photos

Laughing Squid’s coverage of the event itself: 
Massive Zombie Outbreak in San Francisco & Memphis

I have faith in the American people. When presented with a situation that is clearly and obviously precedented, we will learn from history—spending years less time dithering before doing what needs to be done.

“Years” is a vague term, of course. Its minimum is “two.” Given that the current administration appears incapable of perceiving reality, let alone reacting appropriately to it, we’d better stick with the minimum.

The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was August 7, 1964. The Fall of Saigon was April 30, 1975. Ten years, eight months, and 23 days. The Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq was October 11, 2002. If we assume that we can learn from history as described above, we add eight years, eight months, and 23 days. This yields my prediction for the Fall of Baghdad: July 4, 2011.

That works out nicely. It’s a Monday—perfect for the Monday morning quarterbacking claims that we could have “won” if only we’d followed whatever idiot scheme the speaker favored. Better still, the war apologists will be able to stay in their back yards setting off firecrackers to drown out the media coverage of our final squalid retreat.

Truth table
-------------
A B | A BUT B
0 0 | 0
0 1 | 0
1 0 | 1 *
1 1 | 1

(*) Forces B to be equal to 1 by driving the input voltage to HIGH. If the circuitry upstream isn’t capable of reacting appropriately, the behavior of the BUT gate (and thus the design overall) is undefined.

(Using the fourth NAND gate ensures the output is a clean high or low, even on a blurry input voltage from A. For some reason, circuits using a large number of BUT gates tend to be inordinately prone to such troubles.)

The BUT gate is frequently used in the implementation of back-propagation neural networks and in the specialized hardware used to develop analyses supporting the USA’s presence in Iraq.

 ש

Addendum: Phil Gustafson noted that this design latches on any B high event. This is true, but historically, this hasn’t always been of great importance. For instance, during the Cold War, BUT gates often shared A and B lines with one or more electromechanical NYET gates:

I’m certain I’m not the first to think of this—so let’s just call this a restatement of conventional wisdom…

I think I’ve figured out the United States’ religious right. They started to read the Bible, but only got as far as Leviticus before they got bored. They skimmed the rest—managing to pick up that Jesus taught, died, and rose again—but totally missed all the wisdom of His ministry. Then, figuring that the last chapter would be a summation of the whole work, they paid real close attention to Revelation.

This would certainly explain why they seem fixated on a few specific Old Testament tales and verses, they have no clue what Christian virtue actually is, and they spend all their time looking forward to the Apocalypse. Their bluster is that of poor students who, not having learned the whole of their lessons, bluff that the bits they did learn are the only important ones—and perhaps the teacher will fail to notice the underlying ignorance.

MOE: Shaddap! Bring me that sort algorithm deck.

LARRY: Okay, okay. Whoop! [Trips over FORTRAN IV manual. Cards go flying.]

MOE: You nincompoop!

CURLY: It’s okay, Moe. I punched line numbers onto that one! So all we need is to go get the sorting deck, and use it to sort the algorithm deck!

MOE: Yeah, that cou—wait a minute…

GREPPO MARX: [Honk, honk.]

LARRY: What’s he even doing here?

CURLY: Backwards compatibility.

MOE: I’ll backwards compatible you! [Bonks Curly with slide rule.]

CURLY: Oh, yeah? [Eyepokes Moe with flowchart template.]

LARRY: [Gets tie wrapped around printer platen.]

The only way out of the muddled debate as to whether Pluto is a planet or not is to go back to the source of all truth. Consider: when he walked the earth, would Jesus have considered Pluto a planet?

At the time, the key distinction was between “fixed stars” and “wandering stars.” (The very word “planet” comes from planan, Greek for “wander.”) Pluto is not a wandering star—it’s not visible at all under ordinary circumstances. Nor are Ceres, Xena, or all the rest of the miscellaneous rocks and ammonia-soda flavored snowballs floating around out there. Ergo, they’re not planets. Nor is Earth a planet. By definition, where Earth is, the sky isn’t—and a thing that’s not in the sky can’t be a wandering star.

Now, if a light in the sky moves fast enough, it’s a shooting star. This means that we’ll have to reclassify the ISS as a shooting star, of course—that’s how a man of Jesus’ time would have classed it upon seeing it pass overhead. For that matter, a jet visible high above at night would also be a shooting star—unless it turned off its running lights. The Goodyear Blimp is a comet.

This does bring up the question as to just what Pluto and the like are, however. But given that they only become visible when someone tries to study the celestial sphere yet totally misses the point of gazing heavenward, I believe we should err on the side of caution and classify them as demons. (This certainly works well in the case of Pluto—a pagan “god” that rules the underworld. If that’s not Satan hiding in plain view, I don’t know what is.)

Going back to the definitions Our Savior and/or the medieval Church would have used would be inconvenient for professional astonomers, perhaps—but science must ever bow to traditional spiritual values and what the masses believe about the nature of the universe.

 ש

Addendum:

Clare and the Reasons, “Pluto”:

Rumors that this song causes me to mist up are PERFIDIOUS LIES.

(#2 in a series of unoriginal and obvious points I want to be able to say that I made publicly back in August 2006.)

• Bomb in the cargo hold.

• Artificial limb containing 460 ml 50% hydrochloric acid and 432 grams of sodium cyanide. When mixed, these form enough gas to contaminate the 703 cubic meters of a 747 with 300 ppmv of hydrogen cyanide—which can kill you by entering through your eyeballs. (With a long enough exposure, it can even enter through your skin.)

• Sealed glass capsule containing 40 ml GB—which enters through your skin quickly. Assuming 10 ml for the glass itself, this can be carried in the rectum for hours at a time without incurring so much as a funny walk. (VX is worse, on a deaths per gram scale, but is a bit harder to weaponize.) Neither nerve gas requires a government-sized organization to produce—Aum Shinrikyo made (and killed people with) both.

I am not the first to think of these schemes, nor the first to speak of them. Thus, defeating them requires, at a minimum, inspection of all cargo, a qualified radiologist to take and inspect X-rays of all prosthetics, and full cavity searches of all passengers. Any airliner security program that does not include all three things does not protect passengers from threats known to be within the capabilities of private organizations.

Ergo, I argue that the debate is not whether airport security is sufficient. It is known not to be. The only question is why we’re bothering to implement measures that do not solve the problem they’re intended to. What benefit do you figure we derive? Are you sure it’s worth the price?

Further, even if we were to implement all three, there is one last scheme:

• Corrupt a mechanic to install a bomb on the jet during routine maintenance.

No security measure inflicted on passengers can prevent this. Knowing this, does all the delay and indignity of passenger inspection still make you so much as make you feel safer?

Even ignoring the wasted time and subsequent loss of productivity, the security infrastructure is not free. You understand now that the security measures are pointless. How much of your money are you willing to pay—in the form of taxes and higher travel costs—to buy the props for a fool’s paradise?