It seems people are slowly waking up to the lack of truth and impartiality in U.S. news media. The following article tells the story of how millions of Americans tuned in to the BBC for better reporting on U.S. involvement in Iraq. Nice to see that some citizens are beginning to think…
Just thought I’d put this comment out in light of recent American military action (and media reporting) on Afghanistan and Iraq.
“We [North] Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens.”
Emma Goldman
Well, life has been a bit crazy here because of SARS. I got swept up in the panic myself and almost left Beijing last week. I was really afraid that China was going to become a disaster zone and that leaving later would be impossible. I changed my mind and decided to stay, and now I’m not so worried. For one, the medical facts about SARS don’t support the need for panic. For a while it was really hard to get good medical information about SARS, but this week I did find a good seven-page article about SARS from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Personally, about 3 or more weeks ago, when I first heard about SARS, I decided that I’d stop taking the bus and the subway. I still take taxis, though, for better or worse. But I haven’t been going out as much just to keep myself from public places. I stored up on food last week so that I could cook at home. Other people had the same idea because the shelves in the store were noticably emptier, but certainly not empty. Of course I don’t know what the stores are like right now because I haven’t been back this week.
Work has been a bit wierd. Visitors are barred from entering the building as well as from the student apartment building where I live. Staff come and spray my floor with a bleach solution every day. Thankfully it’s not vinegar like other places are using! Also, in the student apartment, we have to sign in every night, give our temperature, and state where we went that day. I’ve been tempted to write things like “whore house on 5th street” or “heroine detox center” just to see if anyone is paying attention. So far I’ve managed to only give serious answers though. The ironic thing is that while they are requiring this to prevent (or track) a possible spread of SARS among the students, we all use the same pen to sign in, so I think the whole thing is pretty useless. Maybe I should sneeze on the sign-in sheet, just for good measure.
My apologies to my family and friends who would like me to be home right now. Thanks for praying for my health and safety.
During my year’s time in China, I’ve struggled with how to express myself politically while living in a country where it isn’t safe to do so. For example, people in China generally hate the American government. They talk about the U.S. invasion of Iraq (2003), but are quite isolated from the discussion and dissent going on around the world. Yes, there were anti-war protests in Hong Kong, but it would surprise me if the media in China reported this. Protests are illegal in the rest of China.
So I am left wondering how I can join and contribute to the discussion going on elsewhere in the world. Well, I listen to CJSR, a community-based radio station in Edmonton, the BBC news, and I read some of the independent media columnists on the Internet.
Here, I give the following two audio clips which were taken from the “Jay and Penny Show” on CJSR, and I encourage you to give them a listen as these are things you won’t hear elsewhere in the media.
The Worst President Ever (1.5 MB)
Howard Zinn on Just and Unjust Wars (3.4 MB)
Welcome to my new website! It’s finally here (to those that have been waiting). I’ve been using Blogger since the beginning of 2003, writing new content from time to time, and I thought it was about time that I integrated my weblog into my website. In fact, the old website was the first one that I’ve ever made, which I created when I started my Masters degree in 1999. That makes it quite old.
So, here’s the new one, redesigned with a lot of old content gone, a bit of new content added, and some of it remaining the same. But now that I have the new design and framework in place, I can start adding new content easily. What’s new? Well, the banner at the top, for one. In the top, right-hand corner you’ll see two graphics showing the geocentric longitudes of the Sun and the Moon, respectively. The positions are generated using the Swiss Ephemeris every five minutes, but you’ll have to refresh the page to see any updates. Also, the quote at the top of the page is now no longer given out at random, but a unique quote is given every day. View the source for this page to see how I do this.
Anyway, I hope you like the new design, and that you’ll keep coming back to see what’s up with me. Let me know what you think. Cheers!
I don’t really have a need or desire for a portable mp3 player. I’m quite happy with my Sharp Minidisc Recorder which I’ve had for over a year now. I’m not intending to go on a rant about the differences between the two devices other than to say that a Minidisc recorder is a portable digital recording studio, whereas an mp3 player, well, just isn’t.
But an mp3 player can be one thing that a Minidisc recorder can never be, thanks to Sony’s unwillingness to open the MD format: a portable file system that holds way more than a floppy disk.
I guess I’ve been in the dark for a while as far as computer hardware and gadgets go. But over the last year I’ve finally noticed and figured out what my colleagues were wearing around their necks. At first I thought these small devices they plugged into their computer’s USB port were wireless network cards. But it turns out they are what are called USB Key drives—tiny, memory-based “hard drives” the size of a key fob or a lipstick stick. What a cool idea. There’s been a need for portable, convenient digital storage that can replace the floppy (and hold more) for quite some time now. I think the USB key drive might be just that. You can even boot your computer off of the filesystem on IBM’s version of the USB key, I’ve heard.
So, when I was trying to find out what these devices were (once I new the function, I still didn’t know the name), I found out rather quickly on the Internet. But I found something better than just a plain old USB key drive in this article:
Creative Labs MuVo: The Singing Diskette.
In the article, you will learn that the people at Creative Labs have built an mp3 player which doubles as a USB key drive. Now that’s a cool idea! So you can store music and data, up to 64 MB or 128 MB. Not bad.
Welcome to boreal Spring! With the Vernal Equinox, the Sun entered the sign Aries earlier today at 0100 UTC, which is another way of saying that the Sun’s geocentric longitude along the ecliptic is starting back at zero degrees again. Or, from the point of view of the Sun, we on the Earth are beginning another cycle around the Sun. But don’t worry, we’ll be back here in another (tropical) year.
Also, the Sun’s geographic position (GP), or the point on the Earth’s surface where the Sun is directly overhead, crossed the equator from south to north at the mighty speed of 1.8 km/h! Now if the Earth did not rotate about its axis, the west-to-east speed of the GP would be about 4.2 km/h at the equator. But when you take into account the rotation, the speed is much faster at about 1671 km/h (and in the opposite direction).
But at least now Spring can begin in the Northern Hemisphere. (Oh, and welcome to Fall if you are in the Southern Hemisphere.)
If you’ve been using my weather page recently, then maybe you’ve been wondering what’s going on. Like, why are days repeating themselves? It’s producing some interesting graphs, like the following:
Well my script actually broke a few days ago because the maintainer of the EAS weather station dropped a few variables from the output of the station. So, I noticed this and promptly fixed the script. But it seems that for some reason, the timestamps on the data are no longer working right. So my script, which relies on their data, happily takes the timestamps and sends them to gnuplot. The cool thing about gnuplot is that it will take date and time information as a variable and stick the data points in the right place. So, in a case like this, where the timestamps are messed up, you get interesting plots like the one above. I’m not sure if the maintainer of the EAS weather station will notice this problem since they only plot the last 24 hours on their web page. But it’s going to mess up their archives of the data.
Now I have been working on a pure Python implementation of my weather scripts which relies on METAR reports from airports. It’s working well, and since I’ve started using the PyMETAR module, I’ve been able to generalize my scripts to any airport around the world. But so far, it’s still in the testing phase and hasn’t gone online yet.
Here’s an interesting article on spam—I like the author’s pro-active approach on fighting spam(mers).
Check out this article. You’ll learn some things I bet you didn’t know. In fact, the first time I read it, I had to stop reading because I was laughing so hard. Your mileage may vary, but at least I hope you get a kick out of it. Enjoy!