Revisiting mrontemp, 3 1/2 years later

On March 17, 2009, I wrote a post entitled Not the last mrontemp post. This, of course, meant that I needed to write a last mrontemp post. I don't know if this is the last one, but it could be.

Back in March 2009, I announced that I would primarily blog under my real name, John Bredehoft, and that I would do fewer things under my pseudonym, Ontario Emperor. That's what I've done; other than my lastfm account, I don't really do much online as Ontario Emperor any more.

The blog empire has remained fairly consistent. As of today, it consists of five blogs: the Empoprise-BI business blog, the Empoprise-IE Inland Empire blog, the Empoprise-MU music blog, the Empoprise-NTN NTN Buzztime blog, and tymshft. (Actually, there's one more, but you have to find it.)

And, of course, the whole debate over real names vs. pseudonyms has continued. Facebook continues to insist on real names, Google+ initially enforced a "real names only" policy, and many other online sites do something similar. This is because the real customers of Google, Facebook and everyone else insist on knowing real names. Remember that you, the users of the services, are not the customers - the advertisers are the customers. Unfortunately, this insistence on real names causes problems, ranging from crackdowns on Middle East democracy advocates to the outing of people who are placed into Facebook groups.

These issues are not going away, but the mrontemp blog has gone away.

Pretty much.

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Elvis Costello, "Accidents Will Happen"

OCTOBER 18, 2012: THIS POST INITIALLY CONSISTED OF A LINK TO A YOUTUBE VIDEO. UPON LOGGING IN TO THIS LONG-NEGLECTED BLOG TODAY, I RECEIVED A NOTIFICATION THAT THIS POST WAS THE SUBJECT OF A DMCA COMPLAINT. THE HECK WITH IT; I JUST DELETED THE POST CONTENT. IF YOU'VE READ MY MORE RECENT BLOG POSTS, YOU REALIZE THAT I'VE HAD ENOUGH PROBLEMS WITH YOUTUBE ALREADY.

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Not the last mrontemp post, but you may want to check out the Empoprises FriendFeed and Twitter accounts

On Tuesday, March 10 at 1:00 pm, I shared a post in this mrontemp blog entitled Of spans and series, or why I haven't written in mrontemp that much.

On Saturday, March 14 at 11:25 pm, I shared a post in my Empoprise-BI blog entitled Empoprise-BI temporarily focuses on self-referentialism. Toward the end of the post, I wrote:

...a lot of it boils down to the fact that my primary interface with the online world is under the "Ontario Emperor" name.

Well, until Saturday afternoon. I made one of those snap decisions and decided to change the precedence of the two personas, and formally make Empoprises (and thus John Bredehoft) my primary persona.

I'm not quite sure what this means yet. It probably means that some of the stuff that "Ontario Emperor" would do will now be done by Empoprises. It could mean a sharp decrease in "Ontario Emperor" activity. And it may also mean that I will spend less time looking at things like technology (unless there is a business focus), politics, and religion.

I've already done some shifting, moving many of my Google Reader subscriptions to my Empoprises Google Reader account, making "John Bredehoft" an administrator on the FriendFeed lastfmfeeds room, and making some other changes that will become more apparent in the coming days.

In essence, while I suspect that things will still pop up here and in my related "Ontario Emperor" properties from time to time, my interests have focused elsewhere.

If you want to follow what I'm doing, check out http://friendfeed.com/empoprises and http://twitter.com/empoprises.

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Who is Rozita Swinton?

A little over a week ago, a trial date was set for Rozita Swinton in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The charge against Swinton is only part of the story:

During a hearing in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Friday, a judge scheduled a May 19 jury trial for Rozita Swinton on a misdemeanor charge of making a false report. She is accused of calling authorities in February 2008, pretending to be a 13-year-old girl drugged, chained in a basement and being sexually abused.

But that's not the case that interests everyone. Here's what happened a couple of months later in 2008:

March 22: A caller to a Washington battered women's shelter gives her name as "Sarah Jessop" and describes physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her husband, Dale Barlow, who she says lives in an Everett, Wash., apartment complex. She calls 27 more times in the next three weeks.

March 29-30: A caller to the NewBridge Family Shelter crisis hot line in San Angelo [Texas] also giving her name as "Sarah Jessop" describes abuse and underage marriage at the YFZ Ranch in Schleicher County and says she is married to Barlow, who she says lived at the ranch.

This then launched the raids at the YFZ Ranch, but "Sarah Jessop" could not be found. However, the calls continued:

April 10: "Sarah" calls again to the Washington shelter, this time detailing her allegations on a three-way call with a Schleicher County deputy sheriff. She also says her "sister wives" are instructing her to lie about her identity to caseworkers interviewing the women and children removed from the ranch. Each time the deputy asks how he can identify her, she hangs up.

April 12: Texas Rangers meet with [Dale] Barlow in [Colorado City,] Arizona but do not act on the arrest warrant filed against him.

April 13: A request to the FBI for phone records of the number used on the three-way call is returned, showing the number registered to someone in the household of Rozita Swinton, who has been accused of making numerous false reports to police and women's shelters. The records show she called NewBridge 16 times between March 22 and April 12. A second number also traced to Swinton called NewBridge seven more times.

April 16: Swinton is arrested at her Colorado Springs home on a charge of making a false report to authorities in an unrelated case. Texas Rangers accompany authorities on the arrest and seize evidence from her home, calling her a "person of interest." She has not been charged with any crime related to the FLDS raid.

So who is she? Someone who suffers from a multiple personality disorder? Someone with a grudge? Digital Journal mused on this:

The psychotics and sociopaths among us rarely stand out as unusual characters. Most are actually quite socially affable and hide their mental illnesses well. For the most part. Until you hear the sensational news stories and the interviews of shell-shocked friends, co-workers, relatives and neighbors saying in disbelief, "he/she was the nicest, quietest, most sane person you'd ever want to meet.'...

The Dallas Observer blog 'Unfair Park' raised the following question on April 18th:

'How does a mentally disturbed Colorado woman become aware of a secretive polygamist sect hundreds of miles away in Texas? More importantly, how does she get the phone number of Flora Jessop?'

You could also ask, how did she obtain very hard-to-get stacks of FLDS materials, names and phone numbers, which Flora Jessop stated the Texas Rangers found during their search?

That blogger, Jesse Hyde, obviously never had to deal with an obsessed person. Every woman who's ever had to deal with a persistent stalker, or psychotic ex-husband or boyfriend, knows exactly how resourceful an obsessed psychotic can be....

Somehow she got the information, but Rozita Swinton's obsessions went far beyond the hoax 'Sarah' calls to the YFZ ranch, which continued long after the April 3 raid. Flora Jessop stated that 'Sarah' had called her AFTER she posted bail for last week's arrest, and finally admitted that her name was 'Rose.'

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Merril Jessop - Normally you don't associate an FLDS leader with a fifth, but there are exceptions

I've been remiss in my Merril Jessop reporting. This story comes from January:

Citing federal conspiracy and Mann Act investigations, YFZ Ranch leader Merril Jessop invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination more than 250 times....

So why did he refuse to answer the questions?

The deposition was conducted principally by Denton family law attorney Natalie Malonis, who has said she sought information about the sect's finances in the hopes of providing financial means for her 17-year-old client, a daughter of Jeffs who sect documents say was married at age 15 to Raymond Jessop, Merril Jessop's then 36-year-old son.

Jessop refused to answer all questions relating to the sect's finances - including those apparently based on sect documents referring to efforts to create a trust in Texas with funds taken from the Utah-based United Effort Plan trust.

When all else fails, go for the money. Remember that Al Capone was eventually brought down on tax evasion charges.

Oh, and I do stand corrected - Jessop's first name only has one L. Or at least Wikipedia says so, for what it's worth.

And by the way, the FLDS case has diminished significantly, according to this March 13 article:

The state's Child Protective Services agency has dropped a 17-year-old mother from its investigation of alleged abuse at the YFZ Ranch, leaving just one child of the 439 initially removed from the polygamous Schleicher County compound....

The only child remaining in the case is a 14-year-old girl that sect documents and pictures show having been married to sect leader Warren Jeffs at age 12.

CPS on Thursday filed a request that the girl, who has struggled to adapt to outside life with two foster families since 51st District Judge Barbara Walther gave the agency custody of the girl last summer, be placed with a distant relative, Bandera resident Naomi Carlisle.

Carlisle, 52, is an FLDS member but has never been a resident of the YFZ Ranch, and five of her 11 surviving children have left the sect upon adulthood, according to investigation documents filed Thursday with the agency's request.

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And I thought the Jolt cola was bad - NASHE "youth group" executes denial of service "defense"

When I hear the phrase "youth group," I end up thinking of things such as church youth groups. I was a member of one when I was a youth, and later as a young adult I was a counselor for another such group. The worst situation that I ever had to deal with as a counselor was when one of the junior high kids drank some Jolt cola before coming to youth group. Afterwards, we decided that this particular youth should be banned from drinking Jolt cola before meetings.

Well, youth groups can do a whole bunch of things, as HS Daily Wire noted in its story 2007 cyber attack on Estonia launched by Kremlin-backed youth group.

Now that's heavy.

A country being outwitted, overwhelmed, and paralyzed by a group of teenagers? Apparently, yes. Members of a Kremlin-backed youth movement have claimed responsibility for May 2007 cyber attacks that crippled Estonia's Internet in the midst of a diplomatic argument with Russia....

Russia has consistently denied any involvement. Yesterday, however, Konstantin Goloskokov, a "commissar" in the youth group NASHE, which works for the Kremlin, told the Financial Times that he and some associates had launched the attack, which appears to be the first time anyone has claimed responsibility. "I wouldn't have called it a cyber attack; it was cyber defense," he said. We taught the Estonian regime the lesson that if they act illegally, we will respond in an adequate way."

For the record, the Russians were defending themselves from Estonia's belligerent act of...um...removing a Second World War Soviet memorial from Tallinn. Considering the way in which Estonia joined the Soviet Union in the Second World War, Estonia's cool feelings about the memorial are understandable.

HS Daily Wire also discussed the technology used in the cyber attack - I mean cyber defense.

Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks, an Internet security company, is an expert on the Estonian attacks and said they measured about 100 MB per second of traffic, compared with the largest recorded attacks of 40 GB per second. He said that generating such an attack was quite simple, requiring "just a lot of people getting together and running the same tools on their home computers".

Sounds like a fun way to spend an evening. Back to Konstantin Goloskokov of NASHE:

"We did not do anything illegal. We just visited the various Internet sites, over and over, and they stopped working. We didn't block them: they were blocked by themselves because of their own technical limitations in handling the traffic they encountered."

Well, I guess that's one way to look at a distributed denial of service attack - I mean defense.

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Of spans and series, or why I haven't written in mrontemp that much

It is now March 10, 2009, and this is only the seventh post that I've written at mrontemp this month.

Compare this with January 2009, during which I wrote 59 posts in this blog, or almost two posts per day.

Or how about January 2008, when I wrote 202 posts?

One could reach the conclusion that I've quit writing in the long form and have instead reverted to just shooting the breeze on FriendFeed.

But actually, that's only part of the equation. I've been blogging up a storm - just not here.

I've talked about my Empoprises project before on this blog. For those who aren't aware, I author a series of four blogs under the "Empoprises" banner. Unlike the "all-encompassing" blog mrontemp, the Empoprises blogs are each devoted to a specific topic.

Far from restricting me creatively, the existence of four separate blogs has actually given me more freedom.

For example, I will often make a game of taking the same event and spanning it across as many Empoprises blogs as possible. Take my weekend visit to the Wal Mart in Chino, California - a business in the Inland Empire that sells music. Yeah, I milked that one.

But I'm having just as much fun writing various series of posts in the blogs. My longest-running series, Empoprise-NTN High Noon, takes a look at various restaurants and bars that offer NTN Buzztime trivia. And I'm getting close to wrapping up a series entitled When Madonna Was Hot. And I just wrapped up A Piece of the P.I.E. (Professionals of the Inland Empire).

But sometimes, rather than planning a series, I just fall into one. For example, on Monday I wrote a post entitled Payola, pay per post, or the 1984 commercial? An inconsistency of moral outrage re product placement business practices. Today, I followed it up with Or perhaps I am outrageous - an opposing view on disclosure and pay per post. Although this doesn't have a cutesy title, I hope to pursue the topic in the future.

If I hold up.

You see, I've been able to keep these blogs running by writing scheduled posts at odd hours (for example, unless I change the schedule, I've already written a Thursday post for Empoprise-BI, "Words aren't only cool, they make you money"). But time is finite, as Steven Hodson noted in a post entitled "Think long and hard before starting that second or third blog." An excerpt:

The problem is that time and energy are never kind to us – especially if our work on our main blog is our primary concern. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence as the web is littered with blogs that have been long forgotten for one reason or another. We only have so much time and/or energy and no matter our first rush of getting that new blog up and running at some point we run out of steam.

So perhaps this may falter along the way, and Empoprises may give me nightmares in the future. But at the moment I'm having fun.

P.S. Steven Hodson wrote his cautionary post on March 2. I've wanted to write a formal response to it, but it's taken me eight days to do it. Although this post is a non-scheduled post, one problem with writing scheduled posts is that they often aren't all that timely. But what does that matter to me? I am not trendy.

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Where's Willard? All over!

I'm working in my hotel room, typing up notes from two days of meetings.

And I actually turned my last.fm off, and turned the TV on.

And there was Jim Vance.

You have to understand that when I was growing up in the Washington area in the 1970s, Jim Vance was the newscaster back then. Of course, his Afro was big, and his hair wasn't white, but he was still around on NBC.

Along with a weathercaster who got a bit of national fame later, in the 1980s - a man named Willard Scott.

So where is Willard today?

He'll be celebrating his 75th birthday on March 7, 2009 (or so Wikipedia tells me). And MSNBC still promotes Scott's centenarian birthday greetings.

Scott's wife died in 2002, resulting in an emotional interview with Larry King in 2003. But, according to PARADE, as of August 2008 he was seeing someone else.

Q Has the Today show’s Willard Scott remarried since the death of his wife? —Melody Perry, Newport Beach, Calif.

A Not yet. “But I have a lady that I squire around a lot,” says Scott, 74, whose wife of 43 years, Mary, died in 2002 from breast cancer. “I like my new lady so much that I bought a house in Connecticut to be closer to her.”

Going a bit back, if you go to The Joy Boys website you can see a YouTube video with excerpts from the last Joy Boys radio broadcast.



Ed Walker, by the way, is still on the radio at WAMU.

Here are some recent articles about Willad Scott from Guilford, Connecticut and Alexandria, Virginia.

But Scott has also participated in P.D.Q. Bach concerts (as part of "New Horizons in Music Appreciation"). See Daily Kos, and this piece.

Wait a minute?

A Copland parody?

More later.

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Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter - What does it don't?

One of my FriendFeed buddies, Chris White, has been busy this evening.

I was sharing some things in Google Reader a little earlier, and White has responded to a couple of them.

For example, I shared something that postulated that Facebook's just-announced changes are an attempt to counter Twitter. White commented via FriendFeed:

What is Facebook, what is Twitter?

A few minutes later, I shared Dana Franks' post "Why Twitter Matters to Me." White commented on the FriendFeed share for this item also:

What is Twitter?

I figured that White was executing a master plan - and frankly, I think that master plans are stupid things unless I'm the one executing them. And, with apologies to Jim Bakker, I was right:

I am going to respond to every Facebook and Twitter post with the question "What does it do?" I'm sure you will be annoyed, and then you will know how I feel.

I might use some variation, such as "What is it?"

Actually, White is asking a valid question, especially since Facebook and Twitter tend to get a lot of press. But you can ask yourself, do the applications do anything?

In an attempt to answer that question, I'd like to invite you to dinner with me. The dozen or so diners who gathered at the restaurant earlier this evening came from different backgrounds - some were scientists, others were forensic people, and others were salespeople or marketers. But all of us were interested in technology. Which meant that several of us brought out our phones at some point in the evening.

Now, as Louis Gray happens to know, my current phone is a 2 1/2 year old Motorola Q (or, as Gray lovingly calls it, an "8-bit rotary phone") with the equivalent of Internet Explorer 4. But Gray will be happy to know that I associate with people that have more modern phones, such as the Apple iPhone that Gray likes. Perhaps you've heard of this phone. And perhaps you've heard of some of the applications that you can get for the iPhone.

• You can get an application that allows the iPhone to act like an ocarina.


• You can get an application that makes irritating noises, like the sound of a dentist's drill.


• You can get an application that imitates a glass of beer - you hold the iPhone upright to pour the beer into the "cup," then you tilt the iPhone to "drink" the beer.

Actually, you can get three applications that imitate a glass of beer - and one of my fellow diners knew someone who had all three.

Now when you hear about these applications, you're forced to ask a probing question about the iPhone:

What does it do?

The answer, whether you're talking about the iPhone, Twitter, Facebook, or a hammer, is that the item in question does whatever you want it to do.

Let me share something more serious from that same dinner. My day job is as a product manager, and part of my responsibility is to set overall direction for my product. As part of my job, and because of my fifteen years in my particular industry, I sometimes pretend like I know what the product should do.

But I've learned something over the years. As soon as I use my imagined knowledge to make a statement such as "This product will never need feature X," I will receive a request from a customer asking for...you guessed it; feature X.

You see, I don't determine how my product will be used. Steve Jobs doesn't determine how the iPhone will be used. And the Facebook and Twitter people don't determine how their products will be used. (Although Jobs and Zuckerberg try to dictate uses.) In the end, it's the users that determine how these products will be used. I say it again, it's the users that determine how these products will be used.

Just like Google doesn't determine how Blogger will be used. This post was originally entitled "What does it don't?" But then I changed the title to "Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter - What does it don't?" knowing full well that the title of the post would eventually end up on FriendFeed...and that Chris White would see it...

Told you that my master plans were brilliant.

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Gaithersburg (Maryland) History Park

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Using the winter coat, part 2

I am NOT going swimming this evening!

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Using the winter coat, part 1

As I've mentioned in some other forums, I had to take a business trip to Maryland today (Tuesday). Luckily I didn't have to fly on Monday, because it was still snowing in the area at the time. (I was monitoring the @insidecharmcity Twitter account very carefully on Monday.)

After a four-hour layover in Denver (I like to not be rushed), I landed at BWI early this evening East Coast time. The roads are clear, and I made it to my hotel.

See the next post for something I found at the hotel.

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Clinton 2.0

The President of the United States isn't the only government official trying to display some electronic communication savvy. Look at what's on the Department of State website.



Yes, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is waiting for your texts.

Wonder if Barack recommended that she use a Blackberry.

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Yes, hell has frozen over...I've joined Facebook

(This picture is from Flickr user billums and is used under this license)

Back on October 9, 2007 I blogged the following:

So I'm thinking that I may have to set up a Facebook account at some point if I want to be only slightly non-trendy. I know I'm supposed to be the "I am not trendy" guy, but my MySpace account is so non-trendy that it's like leeches.

Of course, trendiness is not the sole reason to join Facebook. It's potentially an excellent way to contact people you know.

But, over the years, I've been reluctant to join Facebook for a couple of reasons:

• Their view on pseudononymous accounts. Basically, they prefer that you use your given name on Facebook, even if you market yourself under another identity. Until recently most of my online interactions were under the Ontario Emperor name, and I didn't want to jettison my brand just because Facebook wanted me to do so. If you really want to explore my thoughts on this in detail, check out my link-heavy song parody that I wrote on January 9, 2008.


• The horror stories about Facebook policies. There are numerous examples of these, the whole thingie about the terms of service being the latest example.

Lately, my attitude has been changing on both the counts. I have started several projects (such as Empoprises) that use my real name, so I am establishing an online presence under that "brand" for better or worse. And, while Facebook may have onerous terms of service, so does everyone else.

Last night I spent some time on LinkedIn, and ended up sending connection requests to two people that I knew from high school. This in itself was unusual, because I have only maintained regular contact with one person from my high school. Not because I hated the school or anything like that, but because I left town in 1979 and have rarely been back since, so I've naturally lost touch with a lot of folks. So anyways, I sent the two connection requests, and got the following response from the second person when my request was accepted:

John, get on facebook

Well, when that person talks, I listen. (I'd tell you the name of the person who sent this message, but if I did that, I'd be violating that person's privacy, wouldn't I?)

So I signed up for Facebook and was immediately befriended by Jan McInnis, as well as by a former co-worker who is very social media-savvy. I've sent out a few more friend requests and gotten two responses, but have not yet heard from the classmate who urged me to join Facebook in the first place.

So how will I use Facebook? I've read the suggestions in this FriendFeed thread that I started, and my initial thought is that I will use it in conjunction with my LinkedIn and Plaxo accounts (and, to a limited extent, with my MySpace account). I won't be following over a thousand people like I do in Twitter or FriendFeed, but the Facebook account may not just consist of people that I've physically met either.

In essence, I've provided the answer to my own question:

Has Facebook become one of the services that you must join, whether you like it or not?

Perhaps. Theoretically you could use one service to do everything that you want to do, but there are going to be people who are on Facebook and not on LinkedIn, or vice versa. (This is one of the reasons that I maintain my MySpace account; certain people are only reachable there.)

The only disturbing part of this is that the number of "must-use" services could potentially mushroom out of control. Think about it; in addition to various Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo properties, I have a presence on a ton of services, including:

Allmusic
Am570radio
Amazon
Chumby
del.icio.us
Disqus
Excite
Facebook
Frappr
FriendFeed
Getsatisfaction
Gospelr
InfoWorld
Inside the IE
Jaiku
last.fm
Mojipage
Monster
Mychurch
Myheritage
MySpace
Ning
Pandora
PBwiki
Perplexmi
Scrine
Soup.io
Stumbleupon
Technorati
Tripod
Twit2Fit
Twitter
Velvet Rope
Wetpaint
Wikipedia
Yelp

And that's probably just one third of the services to which I have memberships. There are some memberships that I have for corporate reasons, and there are some memberships that I just plain am not going to talk about (for a variety of reasons).

Frankly, some of the services listed above haven't been visited by me in months, if not years. Some I use every day. But what happens if a situation arises where I have to use five of these services every day? Ten? Twenty?

But I'm not concerned about that now. The immediate concern in my mind is this - what the heck is a poke, and what is the etiquette to follow if I get one? Belgrade and Beyond has expressed some thoughts:

How many times you have been poked by a friend, colleague, and affiliate? And what was your reaction? I had to write few lines on this as I am recently (massively) poked on Facebook. It was regular, surprisingly massively poking (not superpoking), not explicitly poked, but – just regular poke with two choices given: to poke back or remove poke....

In social networking terms, poke is contextual, and the context of poke is dependent upon the current level of familiarity between the ‘poker’ and the ‘pokee’. I remember last year I was invited to a group “Enough with poking, let’s just have sex “, and ignored request for the membership as I observed then poking as friendly virtual gesture with friends and colleagues , usually denoting verbal phrase: “Hey , what’s up?” , or “Look at me!”, saying” ”Hi”, to someone you already know well or screaming background form: “Hey, I’m here, online!,” or “Hey, I’m busy but just poked you to say I didn’t forget this and that or will be back soon’, followed usually by message/email. And there are pokes that are expressing more than friendly, primarily school behavior with connotation: “I poke you and now you have to poke me back”.
Poking for fun? “I won’t pull your hair/ponytail – but I’m poking you” - elements of (naïve) and light weighted flirtation. Therefore, poke can be flirting. Poke can be “I am shy but won’t to say hi”.

There are numerous possible meanings and interpretations behind the poke....

Oh boy. Learning a new culture and its terminology is complex.

#TINOSP.

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The exclusionary and self-justifying nature of hashtags #DYSP

Earlier this morning, in complete compliance with California law, I entered the following message into fftogo:

stopped at a train track. #dysp

All industries and societies, probably including your own, have their own jargon which not only makes it easier for people within the industry or society to communicate, but also serves an exclusionary purpose by ensuring that outsiders have no idea what you're talking about.

Among the other things that hashtags such as #dysp do, they also serve these two purposes. In this case, the second purpose (exclusionary) is beneficial, because if I had spelled out the words in the acronym "dysp," people unfamiliar with the phrase in question would probably misconstrue it.

"What do you have against Steven Perez?" they would ask. "Why are you slamming Steven Perez? What has this guy ever done to you?"

Now perhaps you're one of the readers of this blog who has no idea what "dysp" stands for. The acronym stands for a phrase which took currency on FriendFeed and elsewhere, the phrase being "Damn You Steven Perez!" (often typed in ALL CAPS, but it's early in the morning so I'll spare you). This phrase was used frequently in FriendFeed, and eventually led to the creation of a (then-)private FriendFeed room, the sole purpose of which was to assemble a video of people saying the golden phrase.



The video was released mid-day on Perez's birthday, but he did not have a chance to watch it until later, so his reaction was delayed. (Oh, and be sure to watch past the first minute and 30 seconds.)



For me, use of #dysp instead of the full phrase also confers another benefit. You see, I have a problem saying, or even typing, the word "damn." Even when it is not preceded by the name of a deity, the implications of the term are truly harrowing when you think about them. So I'll use this substitute or another substitute here and there, and when referring to the golden phrase I'll use #dysp and feel better about myself, telling myself that I'm not damning anyone, but just d'ing them.

Of course, that is a danged crock, and my self-justification of my actions isn't fooling anyone. Or Anyone with a capital A.

Oh well...so should I just say, "This is not optimal, Steven Perez"? TINOSP?

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Fundamental rights, one more time - can two fathers marry their two sons?

I've previously blogged about this on October 25, 2008 and December 23, 2008, and it's time to revisit it.

As you may know, California's Proposition 8 is being challenged in the California courts, and a hearing will be held on March 5, 2009. One of the arguments against the proposition is worded as follows:

Proposition 8 Is An Ultra Vires Amendment Because It Abrogates Fundamental Rights Protected By Article I, Section 1 Of The California Constitution Without A Compelling Justification.

There are those words "fundamental rights" again. For the record, here is how Article I, Section 1 of the California Constitution reads:

CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION
ARTICLE 1 DECLARATION OF RIGHTS

SECTION 1. All people are by nature free and independent and have
inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and
liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing
and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.

Note that this states that all people may pursue happiness - not just all straight people, and presumably the 2008 decision of the California Supreme Court is based upon this idea that "all people...have inalienable rights...[for] pursuing...happiness."

Um...all people?

On February 23, Randy Thomas linked to an MSNBC article by Kathleen Lewis. The title of the article? "I have two husbands."

...My first husband was Alan.

We fell together like a couple of old shoes, somehow instantly comfortable with each other. We had similar opinions about plural relationships, and neither of us was averse to the idea. Around a year and a half after we were married, we met Eric. He and I were instantly attracted to each other and, as Alan had no objection, we began getting to know each other better. Over time, I found myself falling in love with Eric. Alan certainly wasn't blind to this, so we all got together to discuss it. This turned out to be one of the most important conversations of my life, and led to an increase in my family’s size.

Alan and Eric let me make the sleeping arrangements, and I worked to make sure I spent time with both of them. To all outward appearances we were a married couple with a male friend living with us. While some found it awkward when the three of us occasionally attended parties and such together, very few people attempted to pry. To avoid legal troubles, I remained legally married to Alan, and we all decided a larger house was in order when we met Leslie.

Fast forward to today, and our family is now composed of Alan, Eric, Leslie, Amber, and myself, plus our children: Todd, Steve, Jennifer, Lisa, and Amber is currently pregnant.

The MSNBC article goes on to describe the logistics of the marriage, and then criticizes the restricted worldview of "Big Love":

When ‘Big Love’ came out, we all thought it was pretty silly. To start with, we all consider ourselves to be one family, not three separate but connected families. The ideas that plural marriage is restricted to the one man and several wives model — and that it has to have a religious basis — are both ridiculous. We also don't consider the political jockeying, the backbiting, and the attempts to get more of the husband's attention or money, to be loving behavior.

Lewis then concludes:

With all the traditions we have coming from other cultures and various parts of the country, who's to say what is or isn't mainstream? Kind of makes "non-traditional" lose its meaning.

So presumably this family has a fundamental right to be recognized as such in the state of California. And anyone who disagrees is an oppressor.

But let's take this a step further. What if the two dads - Alan and Eric - decide that they want to marry a couple of the children - let's say Todd and Steve?

After all, why not? It's not like Leviticus 18 has any binding force in the state of California. And anyone who would try to apply Leviticus 18:6 and the rest would be extremely insensitive. Take Barney Frank:

"Mr. Warren compared same-sex couples to incest. I found that deeply offensive and unfair."

Or, in other words, Barney Frank is displaying his hateful attitude toward people who, in the words of the California Constitution, "have inalienable rights...[for] pursuing...happiness." Sounds like a fundamental right to me. You know, if people would just be accepting and not be such haters, Michael Jackson might still be living in Neverland today.

But let's go back to Randy Thomas, who has a different view:

Because I am a Christian I believe a family should be a Husband and Wife coming together as one. Both Husband and Wife have very specific, wonderful roles and responsibilities that complement each other. The blessing of their unique gender roles and giftings add to a level of healthy interdependency that helps both become more together than they would ever have been alone. They don’t mirror each other in bland “gender neutral” definitions. They celebrate each other’s equal capacity to bear the Image of God uniquely as well as when they bear His Image together. Their union is transcendent in that it bears the Image of God in a way that no other union can. If the Lord chooses to allow them to have children or adopt … great! The family increases to Gramps, Gramma, Mom, Dad … Punkin’ and Dot! And of course it goes without saying … uncles, aunts … cousins. I believe that God created that to be His ideal “version” of family so, I am biased.

Thomas concluded his post as follows:

My question is this, do same sex couples condone polyamorous/polygamous relationships? I will offer my view (from my past experience and current ear to the ground) either in the comments below or in a follow up post. But I want to give you all some time to respond too. Don’t be shy :). Oh and I hope that there may be other things in this post you might want to chime in on so … go for it.

As I write this Thomas has only received one comment to his post, but a spirited discussion has broken out in this FriendFeed thread. In the conversation, Mark Trapp pointed out how the California Supreme Court may evaluate different proposals to limit marriage:

The ruling also provides two standards by which the state must determine any (not just same-sex marriages) marriage validity: "Under the strict scrutiny standard, unlike the rational basis standard, in order to demonstrate the constitutional validity of a challenged statutory classification the state must establish (1) that the state interest intended to be served by the differential treatment not only is a constitutionally legitimate interest, but is a compelling state interest, and (2) that the differential treatment not only is reasonably related to but is necessary to serve that compelling state interest."

Of course, it all depends upon what the compelling state interest is. For example, if the compelling interest is to encourage procreation, then gay marriages may not be valid, but marriages of eight teenagers who have hit puberty may be valid. After all, as I've noted before, marriages of young people existed well before the California Constitution was written. If, on the other hand, the compelling interest is to create stable relationships, then the only valid marriages may be ones in which people have certain beliefs opposing divorce, and in which the married participants have income levels that lend themselves to stable relationships (not too poor, not too rich, but just right).

This will be an interesting ruling when it comes out.

P.S. If you have comments specific to polygamy and polyamory and whatever other poly- word you can conceive of, you may want to enter your comments into Randy's post directly.

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Those who are condemned to repeat history are bound to remember it

Louis Gray was interviewed in Sociosophy, and something that he said caught my eye:

I would like to find a way to...make it easier to find older content that is relevant. I know that 95% or more of my posts from 3 months ago and before get very little visibility now, even if they are still extremely relevant.

I was musing on this as I was getting my hair cut (hey, you gotta do something), and I figured out three ways in which older content can be highlighted again:

• The Ann Landers way. Matthew and Sarah Gray aren't the only twins around; the most famous Ann Landers was a twin of the most famous Dear Abby (Ann was really Esther, while Abby was really Pauline). At one point, Ann Landers got into a bit of trouble for re-running old columns without advertising them as such.


• The Unclutterer way. There is a blog called the Unclutterer (I can definitely use it), and they'll often run a post with the title "A year ago on Unclutterer." (Here's the February 22, 2009 version, which looks at posts from February 2008.) This serves to remind you of good stuff from the past.


• The "Where Are They Now?" way. Normally used in music and entertainment (whatever happened to Foghat???), this potentially provides a way to recycle the old content and update it, making it wonderful and fresh and relevant.

The last way is the most intriguing, since it actually adds value to the content. For example, what would happen if Gray added value to his earlier content? Let's pretend that he wrote a post like this back in January 2006:

Portable computing devices just keep on getting smaller and smaller. I don't have kids, but someday I may have a kid, and I wonder if the portable devices that are around at that time will be small enough to fit in my infant child's hand?

Well, Gray (to my knowledge) never wrote a post like that, but certainly he could update the post today and speculate on devices that TWO kids could hold.

I'm am not Louis Gray, but I'm intrigued about using this "where are they now" method myself. I've done it here and there on occasion, but perhaps I could make a concerted effort to recycle my content. And it would definitely require a concerted effort, because I've generated a lot of quality content over the years. I contributed 3,072 posts to my first main blog, the Ontario Empoblog, between October 2003 and February 2007. My current main blog, this very mrontemp, already has 2,925 posts (not counting this one). Plus I've written a few hundred in various other blogs, ranging from my fake radio and TV station blogs to my current series of Empoprises blogs.

So I've got a lot of recycling and updating to do, should I choose to do so.

Perhaps Empoprise-MU is due for a post on Fred Smith. I've covered Patti Smith pretty well already.

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If he had used the name "John Doe," no one would have suspected anything

Normally I don't post work-related stuff in my personal blog, but this one was too good to pass up. Put this in the dumb crime category.

From the Manchester, New Hampshire Police Blog:

Manchester Police Officers conducting a routine traffic stop on Hanover St. [on the afternoon of February 15, 2009] were greeted by a local man who provided the name John Brown and claimed to have a Maryland driver's license. When no record of the license was found, the man was arrested and brought to the Manchester Police Department. Despite his insistence that he was giving his true name, the officers sensed a problem.

Now I don't see why the police were jumping to conclusions. Just because a local guy claims to have a Maryland driver's license, which he doesn't have, is no reason to think that any hanky-panky is going on. After all, he gave his name, John Brown. What more do you want?

Well, for whatever reason, the police decided to investigate a little further:

They then brought the man over to the department's Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) machine and entered his fingerprints. The officers then made contact with NH State Police, who were able to provide an immediate identification of the subject. As it turns out, the officers' instincts were correct and the subject had in fact provided a false name. He was identified as:

John Hilliard DOB: 9-7-1973 of 45 Bradley St. Manchester

Through further investigation, it was found that subject Hilliard had two outstanding Bench Warrants and an active Arrest Warrant for a Parole Violation. Along with the warrants, Hillard was charged with Disobeying a Police Officer and Unsworn Falsification.

Oops.


View Larger Map

As you can see rom the map, Brown's - I mean Hilliard's residence is right next to Nutts Pond.

Sounds about right.

P.S. While there have been cases over the years that have challenged the accuracy of fingerprint searches, it should be noted that tenprint searches - i.e., searches in which a person's complete set of prints is compared to a previously captured complete set of prints - are very accurate. The cases that have come under question, such as the Brandon Mayfield case, have involved searches of latent prints, or prints (or partial prints) that are recovered from crime scenes. Since the criminal is not courteous enough to leave a high quality print at the crime scene, these prints are much more difficult to search. Chris in Utah explains the difference:

While it is pretty technical, CSI isn’t really rocket science. And while fingerprint evidence isn’t nearly as reliable as DNA, it IS reliable. What your article was talking about is what is called a partial fingerprint. If you are lucky enough to find what is called an "AFIS" (Automated Fingerprint Identification System) quality fingerprint, and it matches your suspect, it is so close to the reliablilty of DNA that the difference is not worth mentioning. But we very very rarely get that quality of fingerprint. We do find partial prints. They say that they are of comparison quality, if you find a suspect, you can match it to that person, but you can’t run it through the AFIS system. Those prints are not nearly as reliable as DNA. Those prints are the ones that cause problems.

If you're interested in the subject of latent print examination, from both a forensic and a legal basis, I highly recommend Ed German's website at onin.com/fp.

Disclosure - my employer provided the Automated Fingerprint Identification System to the state of New Hampshire, but this case would have resulted in the same outcome had John Brown - I mean Hilliard lived and committed crimes in a state with an AFIS from another company, such as Massachusetts, Connecticut, or New York.

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On Saturday's FriendFeed meetup, and on meetups in general

Some people may think it odd that communicating via computers can lead to increased non-computer communications, but I've known that for decades.

I've previously blogged about some of my BBS experiences in the early 1990s (see this list of BBS systems I frequented), but some of the most fun from that time would be when the people from The Grotto and other WWIV boards would gather at places such as Benjie's (long gone), drink cold brown thingies, and shoot the breeze about Ralph the iguana and other topics that were the BBS generation's equivalent of bacon/mango conversations.

After that, most of my online communications remained strictly online until I began going to Oracle OpenWorld and blogging about it. When I first went to Oracle OpenWorld I'd only stay for a day or two, so it's wasn't until 2007 that I got to personally meet the other Oracle bloggers at the Thirsty Bear. I've joined them again in 2008 and, depending upon what transpires in my future, I hope to join them again at Oracle OpenWorld 2009.

So over a week ago, Anika Malone began planning a FriendFeed meetup for FriendFeed users in the Los Angeles area, at the Five Guys in Cerritos, California. While part of the attraction was the chance to sample a Five Guys burger (my parents had told me about them), obviously another part was the opportunity to meet Anika and other FriendFeeders, none of whom I had met before (other than the Oracle people, of course).

So my wife (who is not on FriendFeed or Twitter, but who did get active in the Grotto and some other BBS systems back in the day) and I drove down to Cerritos, a little later than usual (tips: make sure you leave on time, and that your just-repaired car seat actually works, and that you have money for food). After I got my lunch, I got a chance to visit with some other FriendFeeders: not only Anika (faboomama), but also adrianculici, krynsky, geekandahalf (Derrick), elzbeth (Pea), and faithx5 (Jandy).

While my wife and I skipped out on post-burger geek store goodies, we had a fun time.

Incidentally, I've written three additional posts which are at least tangentially related to the FriendFeed meetup:

• Buffalo in Hovercraft, or Why I Don't Direct Videos (Empoprise-MU)


• Five Guys Burgers and Fries (Empoprise-BI)


• Van Hagar and the stringless phenomenon (Empoprise-MU)

And no, I couldn't think of any way to work the experience into my other two blogs, since Cerritos isn't in the Inland Empire, and since Five Guys doesn't have NTN Buzztime trivia.

But this isn't the last meetup that I'll be attending; the LinkedIn group Professionals of the Inland Empire will be getting together on Tuesday, and I hope to stop by there for a little bit (although I have another commitment later that evening).

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Lunch.

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