THE VIEW FROM CHAOS MANOR

VIEW96 April 10 - 16, 2000

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This is a day book. It's not all that well edited. I try to keep this up daily, but sometimes I can't. I'll keep trying. See also the monthly COMPUTING AT CHAOS MANOR column, 4,000 - 7,000 words, depending.  (Older columns here.) For more on what this place is about, please go to the VIEW PAGE.

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Highlights this week:

• The Godfrey - Demon case was LAST week
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• Catherine Crook de Camp, RIP
• The evolution debates continued
• Bayes Theorem and group membership
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Sub-webbing can get complicated because image files tend to drift around and the links aren't set properly. FrontPage does a pretty good job, but in converting from sub-web to folder and back again things can get unglued. For example, I found that in my pictures page, there were references to the opening of The Fantastic Mr. Fox. This brought up a bookmarked part of an archived View 26 page, and the picture thumbnails were on that. Internally those pictures were fine: that is, I could look at the page in FrontPage and the thumbnails were there with the proper links, but if I looked at that page out on the web they were not. It took me a while to figure out the proper links. I've fixed them, but it took time. Fortunately it was a bit of a learning experience, but it also shows me this site is organized in a pretty grim way.

I also found an unreferenced picture that may be interesting:

I took this near the beach house. That stupid jutting thing, which could easily cause a serious accident, was put there at the demand of the San Diego building permit people, who insist that it is part of a handicapped access -- although this is the external stairs entrance to the porch of a private condominium apartment, never for rent (by the condominium rules these units must be owner occupied) -- and it's not clear to us or anyone else how this screwy thing is going to help handicapped people mount stairs they don't need to take -- there's an internal entrance to the apartment anyway -- or do any good for anyone else. Since there is a bicycle storage area just to the right, this jutting protrusion is likely to cause accidents with kids putting their bikes away. And of course you can't sue the bureaucrat who ordered this nonsense. It makes you long for the Old Days when an imbecilic bureaucrat could become acquainted with tar and feathers and a rail ride out of town. 

Such people always plead "But I am just doing my job!"  Sure, and the job isn't worth doing. A job not worth doing is not worth doing well. Steal the money. Shuffle off, do nothing, and take the money home: don't try to justify taking it. You know you aren't really earning your salary. Admit to it.

Henry David Thoreau, asked by a useless bureaucrat what he should do, said "Resign."  He later said that when the officers have all resigned their offices the revolution is accomplished. No wonder they don't really teach Thoreau in the schools now; they pretend to, but they never read what he actually said.

It turns out this used to be referenced in View62 as well. Well, so I forgot...

And this from Ed Hume:

This quote comes from the email signature of a librarian at LeMoyne College, Syracuse:

"Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by

pack rats and vandalized nightly." Roger Ebert

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Intellectual Capital column due tonight. Taxes due at end of week. I do my own taxes because it takes too long to explain to an accountant and I have a computer program I wrote (in C-BASIC in CP/M already yet!) that does much of the work once I get everything entered into journals: it makes ledgers with items posted to the proper pages including depreciation schedules (for simplicity I use a straight line depreciation) and the TurboTax takes care of the rest. But you have to enter all the items...

This just in:

Catherine Adelaide Crook de Camp, 1907-2000

Author and editor Catherine A. Crook de Camp died Sunday, April 9, 2000 in Plano, Texas.

Inseparable in both life and letters from her husband L. Sprague de Camp for more than sixty years, Catherine Crook de Camp was his co- author for several SF and fantasy novels, anthologies, and nonfiction books. The novels include THE BONES OF ZORA (1983), THE INCORPORATED KNIGHT (1987), THE STONES OF NOMURU (1988), and THE SWORDS OF ZINJABAN (1991). Among the nonfiction titles are a classic guide to understanding and writing SF, SCIENCE FICTION HANDBOOK (1953); a book on magic, SPIRITS, STARS AND SPELLS (1966); and a biography of Robert E. Howard, DARK VALLEY DESTINY (1983). She was also an uncredited but "freely acknowledged" contributor to a number of other L. Sprague de Camp titles.

In her many appearances at conventions through the decades, she created a lasting impression on both readers and fellow writers. Raymond E. Feist remembers her as "a wonderful, warm lady brimming with old world charm and a sense of style missing from today's landscape." Robin Wayne Bailey recalls "a most charming lady with as many interesting stories about fans and pros and the 'old days' as Sprague himself."

Following a memorial service in Plano, Texas, Catherine Crook de Camp's remains will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. The family has asked that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Alzheimer's Association (http://www.alz.org/involved/donation/  ).

Sprague and Catherine are of a generation earlier than mine. She was a gracious lady and a good friend, and I regret no hour I spent in her company. She graduated from college the year I was born, and she remained a lovely woman all the years I knew her.

I have added to the MacroEvolution debate, with a letter from Germany.

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Intellectual Capital deadline today. Recorded a session for Techweb this morning: on Free Network and such like. Interesting and should be added to my column. And now to work...

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I'm off to se the wizard, or at least Niven. We'll be hiking in his hills, and I expect to be exhausted by evening...

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Tax time. My Intellectual Capital column is up. Go rad that...

If you go to 

http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/stalkers/em_bayes.html 

you will find a rather technical article of considerable value in explaining "prejudice" and decisions. The arguments are mathematical. The social consequences are a bit hard to fathom.

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Tax time, a black letter day. We won't have worked long enough this year to pay the taxes that will be due. I'm sure my contributions are appreciated by our masters.

Mr. Dobbins reports another good net vulnerability test site. It will probably report FAILED in big letters on the "PING" test; be sure to read the explanations.  Many safe sites will respond to a ping. A FAIL in one of the other tests would be a great deal more serious.

http://dev.whitehats.com/scan/ddos/ddos.html 

 Roland Dobbins <mordant@gothik.org> 

and I am likely to be absent the rest of the day as I prepare to render tribute unto Caesar.

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