Thu, 30 Nov 2006
Ride starting Thu Nov 30 11:30:06 2006
12.71 km 41685.23 feet 7.89 mi
2637.00 seconds 43.95 minutes 0.73 hours 10.78 mi/hr
Went for my standard short ride today. Quite windy and spitting rain.
However, with the temperature at 64 degrees on the last day of November, I
simply couldn't not go for a ride.

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Wed, 29 Nov 2006
Oh Well
Sigh. Turns out that Maemo-blogger was pre-functional software.
Not only did it merely appear to operate, it was so bad the authors
withdrew it from distribution. Oh well. I'm home again, and look
forward to some day trying maemo-blogger again.
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Tue, 14 Nov 2006
Heading off to Mumbai
Heading off to Mumbai shortly for a week's worth of consulting for Rediff. Thought I'd set up a system for blogging from my 770, using Maemo-blogger and pyblosxom's xml-rpc interface. Sweet!
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Wed, 08 Nov 2006
Nigger
There. I've said it. In public. The N word. I must be a racist,
right? Only racists say the "N" word. But why is "nigger" so powerful?
Do racists create its power to shock? No. It doesn't shock them.
Blacks have given this word its power. Blacks can take that power away.
Read on.
From time to time, people accuse economists of being indifferent to
the issue of power. For example, some people defend unions as being a
natural reaction to the power of an employer over the employee. The
employer can find another employee easier than the employee can find
another job -- or so goes the theory. It is true that power always
affects economic relationships, but it's not true that one class
always has power over another. I try not to ignore power.
"Nigger" is a word of power, and I don't like that.
Let the word roll off your tongue lovingly. Nigger.
Say it again. Nigger. And again. Nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger.
Say it enough times so that it loses all ability to shock. Nigger.
Nigger. And more, until it loses the ability even to offend. Nigger.
Nigger. And more, until it has no meaning. Nigger. Nigger. What a
funny little word is nigger! Who nigs, anyway, and what's wrong with
nigging?
Quaker used to be an insult. Quaker, like in shaking in his boots.
Like in coward. Mormon used to be an insult too. So did queer. So
did dyke. The trouble with taking offense at nigger is that it
empowers the user. It gives them a power to shock, to offend, to
insult. It turns a word into a permanent edifice to racism. Taking
ownership of an insult takes away power from the would-be insultor.
It forces them to work, to create another insult. Yet it is of no
avail, because the new insult can be stripped from them, by accepting
it with love.
Learn to love nigger. Love is the only way to destroy the word's power.
UPDATE 11/9: I received email from H. Lewis Smith, the author of Bury that
Sucka!. He objects to the black community's internal use of nigger as
a friendly self reference, but when used by people outside of the community,
it is an insult. I agree with him. If the power of the word is to be
destroyed it can only be done through consistency. I think it can be best
destroyed with a "Yes, I'm a nigger" attitude. It seems to me like he thinks
that if black people stop using it, so will everyone else (see below). I disagree with
him there. As long as there are racists, and as long as racists can offend
by using it, the word will be used.
UPDATE 11/12: Lewis writes again to clarify: he wants blacks to stop using
nigger because it's a form of self-loathing. He fully expects racists to
continue using it regardless of what blacks do. In this, he and I are
diametrically opposed. I think the solution is greater acceptance and
self-identification among blacks (with the goal being to replace its
pejorative meaning with a mundane one); he thinks the solution is rejection by
blacks (who are, after all, the major user of the word these days --
it's not acceptable for whites to use it even in quotes. For example,
St. Lawrence County is currently trying a white drug dealer for murder,
and his attorney cautioned the jury that even though he might "use the N-word"
that shouldn't prejudice them against him. When somebody on the jury said
that they didn't know what the N-word was, he spelled it out for them, but
still couldn't say it.)
Posted [10:52] [Filed in:
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Pollution
Everyone is against pollution. That means "stuff where the
property owner doesn't want it." So it could be litter, or air
pollution, or water pollution, or groundwater pollution. Nobody wants
somebody else to pollute their property. Nobody
The problem is that pollution is difficult to control. How do you
stop a factory from polluting the air when they're doing it from their
property, and you have no contractual relationship with them? The
economic term for this is "externality," because the effects of the
factory are external to itself and its customers. The standard answer
is "Well, you just pass a law."
The problem with a government solution is that government itself is
difficult to control. Voting is the ultimate externality. The
majority inflicts its will on a minority.
Using government to solve pollution doesn't solve the problem; it
just transforms it into a different problem. Perhaps the government
solves the pollution problem, but then it creates other problems at
the same time. If you could get it to not create those problems, it
probably couldn't stop pollution either.
Posted [10:47] [Filed in:
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XML sucks
Whereas: it is hereby resolved that XML sucks. Thus is born the
Nelson Simple Data Format Specification (NSDFS):
- Character encoding is UTF-8.
- Every line holds one value.
- Every value has a name.
- Names and values are given in the form name=value.
- Certain characters must be encoded using a percent character followed by two hex digits.
- A name which contains a space, percent, newline or equals must use %-encoding.
- A value which contains a percent or newline must use %-encoding.
- Values may be grouped together using indentation. The indentation rules are identical to Python's but tabs are not allowed.
In a single line, then, the NSDFS is:
UTF-8, name=value, % encoding of [ %=\n], use Python indentation for hierarchy but no tabs.
Every file encoding can be losslessly and usefully transformed into NSDFS.
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Tue, 07 Nov 2006
Blood Donation Stupidity
Don't believe the Red Cross, or any other blood bank, when they
claim that they have a shortage of blood donors. They don't. They
have created a shortage of blood donors through unscientific policies.
For example, I have travelled to India multiple times in the past
year, and am headed off there again next week. I have to wait a year
from the most recent donation. ONE YEAR. Even though I'm O-Negative
blood, my blood could save somebody's life, and according to the paper
below, we're saving 0.03 people from getting malaria. That's like
three people per century!
Here's the abstract of an
NIH paper published in 1991 (that's fifteen years ago):
- Nahlen BL,
- Lobel HO,
- Cannon SE,
- Campbell CC.
Malaria Branch, Centers for Disease Control, US Department of Health and Human Services, Atlanta, Georgia.
In the United States (US), travelers who have had malaria or who
have taken antimalarial chemoprophylaxis are deferred as blood donors
for 3 years to prevent transfusion-transmitted malaria. To assess the
impact of shortening this 3-year exclusion period, national malaria
surveillance data from 1972 to 1988 were reviewed. The average annual
rate of transfusion-transmitted malaria is 0.25 cases per million
units of blood collected. Of 45 reported cases, 38 percent were caused
by Plasmodium malariae, 29 percent by P. falciparum, 24 percent by
P. vivax, and 9 percent by P. ovale. Thirty-two donors were implicated
in 34 cases of transfusion-transmitted malaria. Of 30 implicated
donors whose native country was identified, 23 (77%) were foreign
nationals and 7 (23%) were from the US. In a review of all imported
malaria cases by species and by interval between date of entry and
onset of illness, 98 percent of P. falciparum, 86 percent of
P. malariae, 76 percent of P. vivax, and 74 percent of P. ovale
infections became symptomatic within 6 months of the patient's arrival
in the US, regardless of the use of prophylaxis. Shortening to 6
months the donor exclusion period for US travelers to malarious areas
would result in a minimum of 70,000 additional blood donors' being
made available, with a maximum annual increase of 0.03 additional
cases of transfusion-transmitted malaria. The potential benefit of
bringing healthy travelers back into the donor pool after a shorter
period of exclusion merits consideration by the blood banking
industry.
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Wed, 01 Nov 2006
Ride starting Wed Nov 2 09:58:35 2006
36.84 km 120874.56 feet 22.89 mi
11337.00 seconds 188.95 minutes 3.15 hours 7.27 mi/hr
Went down to Watertown to keep my daughter company on her trip to take the
GREs. Since the weather report looked good, I brought my bike. Went
exploring the Black River Trail. Started in downtown Watertown. Found lots
of great things. I wasn't sure where the railbed was ridable, so I started at
the beginning. The rails are still in Central
Street and N. Hamilton
St.. The railbed is gated on the west side of Hunt Street, but is
(mostly) free of brush on the east side. I was able to ride from there to the
Black River Trail trailhead. Two bridges were out. The first stream was
jumpable. Just to the east of the stream was a granite memorial to "John B.
Goehl" dated 1846-1877. The memorial looked quite new. Strange!
I had to wade through the water that the second bridge used to cross. Took
my shoes off for that. It's just to the west of the new trailhead.
The Black River Trail
The Black River Trail starts in Huntingtonville and nominally ends just short of
Black River (pictures above left and right). There's a trailhead in
Huntingtonville and Black River. The
Black River end is crushed stone and isn't marked as a trailhead. It's
labelled as a picnic area and canoe carry. For whatever reason they didn't
pave the trail all the way into Black River. Also, the unpaved portion
leaves the railbed and re-uses a portion of the abandoned Woodard Hill Rd.
The railbed is used as a farm road by a farmer. It's passable but quite muddy
in places.
Past Black River the railbed is used as an ATV trail. I entered the trail
from SR3 just east of Black River. As is typical of an ATV trail, they have
carved out muddy spots which accumulate water and become puddles. A power
line enters and
leaves
the trail going towards Felts Mills. There is a beautiful stone bridge crossing
Felts Mills Creek. UPDATE: a year later, in September 2007, I rode to this point from Carthage. UPDATE: the trail paving will be finished soon.
Back in Watertown, I found the Black River Paper Company. They have a
boxcar out in front of their building, sitting on an old siding. The railroad
it was connected to has been gone for at least ten years now. It seems to
have been painted about three years ago. It has standard railroad markings,
but the side is labelled "Blue Diamond Hardware" with smaller "Black River
Paper Company". I suspect that the owner of Blue Diamond Hardware is a
railfan.
See Flickr for more photos.

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