Geometry As An Interactive Design Space

I've been somewhat coy about the software project I'm working on; that was exacerbated by my having to take a break from working on it for some months to deal with other aspects of Real Life ; now I want to talk about it in some detail, and show you why I'm interested in it, and what I hope will come out of it. If you haven't yet read my previous post on "The Geometry of the Many-Angled Ones", please follow that link and read it; there's a very basic description of Geometric Algebra there, and that's the basis of the software I'm designing. When you come back, jump past the cut for the rest if this post.

If You Want War, Prepare For War.

I realize it's been a long time since I posted an entry in this blog.  There are a lot of reasons for the silence, and most of obstacles have gone away now so I was planning to start posting again in the next couple of weeks.  This morning, however, I read this article on wired.com and I have to comment on it.

The gist of the article is that the US Air Force is deploying aircraft in the region around Iran with the ability to rapidly destroy Iran's anti-aircraft capability in order to allow either bombing of nuclear facilities identified as possibly involved in the nuclear weapons project that Washington alleges Iran to be working on, or, less probably (I hope), an invasion of Iran by US and Israeli forces.

The first thought I had was of deja vu: shades of 2003 and the preparations for invading Iraq while the US government lied to the US people and the world about the non-existent Iraqi nuclear and biological weapons programs. Now that the US military involvement in Iraq has finally ended, and the conventional military involvement in Afghanistan is scheduled to begin winding down, the US military is in danger of not having any wars except the drone wars the CIA and the Defense Department's Joint Special Operations Command are waging in Yemen (where the drone war has just been escalated), Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Somalia. So it's not surprising that they're hoping to start another one in Iran.

After the cut I'll talk about why this is an extremely bad idea, and why the American people should demand that it not happen.

Stop SOPA Before it Stops the Internet!

Steve Jobs: Say What you Want About Him, He's Left the World Changed.

Steve Jobs is gone now, but the engine of change he built is still there, and still changing the world.

Two Movies: of Beauty and Evil

A couple of weeks ago I watched a movie called Water, and a couple of days later I watched another one called Never Let Me Go. Although they're very different movies in many ways: Water was made in India, and takes place in Varanasi on the Ganges in 1938, and Never Let Me Go takes place in an alternate history late 20th Century England, they are visually and dramatically beautiful films made with great craft. and they are both about societies which accept, even profit from, great evil. I was deeply moved by both films, and couldn't escape being seriously disturbed by the evil in both. Strangely, I had not heard of either one before watching them (I usually at least read a review in the local paper of any new movie, though I've been missing them more lately because we've been going to the theater perhaps once a year), but after watching the second one I immediately thought of their similarities. I'll talk more about the films and why they are alike after the cut. Caution: there are spoilers for both movies.

Snarks in a M*****F****** Text!

Via Pharyngula, a generator for Lorem Ipsum babble text in the mode of Samuel L. Jackson.  After the cut, because, after all, it sounds like Samuel L. Jackson.

Congratulations Are In Order!

I just got an email from my older son, telling me that he and his wife were both unanimously voted tenure by the members of their department at LSU.  It's not official yet, there's lots of administrivia yet to be done, but that was the most critical step in the process.  This has been one hella summer for them: first the baby and now a major step in both their careers.  We're incredibly proud of them.

More Pictures of Ellie

I've uploaded all the pictures I took last week of Ellie to Picassa.  There are two albums, "Ellie #1" and "Elllie #2". Link here.

My Grandchild ...

My grandchild is, of course, the cutest baby in the universe.  She's just shy of 4 months old, and already knows all about performing, and holding the attention of the crowd. She's a happy baby, only cranky when she gets overtired or hungry.  She's good with strangers, and strangers (or at least the grandparents she's never seen before) graduate to friends and family very quickly.  Here's one picture, to give you a sense of why she's the best baby there is :-)

That's Eva (Grandma) holding Ellie. As you might expect, I've got about 60 or 70  more pictures of her, and I'll probably take a bunch more before we go back home on Monday.  I'll start putting them up on the net, on either Flickr or Picassa most likely, in the next day or two.

Her name is Ellie, short for Ellanor (combining Ella Fitzgerald and Nora Jones, two of her parents' favorite singers.  She seems to be quite at home in the heat and humidity of the Louisiana summer (which is more than I can say for myself).  She really wants to get up and boogie, or at least crawl, and not being able to frustrates her sometimes. I think she's going to be a great kid, even discounting my prejudices.

UPDATE: There are more photos on my Flickr photo stream: Ellie at 3 1/2.

Travels and Home Maintenance

Just so you know why my posts and comments are going to be coming in sporadic bunches: we're simultaneously getting ready to go to Louisiana for a week to meet our brand-new grandchild and boxing up everything in the bottom floor of the house so we can move it all out and have the floors redone. What we have right now is really crappy grey carpet, which picks up dog smells like you wouldn't believe, and is currently several shades darker than it was when we first moved in (and cleaning it helps only temporarily). And since kids and grandchild are coming to visit us here in a month or so, we need to toss the carpet. Also, because our TV set is an old CRT model that weighs more than 150 pounds, and even together the two of us can't move it, let alone carry it upstairs, we're going to replace it with a flatpanel and let the recyclers haul it off. So there'll be lots to do in RL here for the next couple of weeks, and not much time to push electrons around. But if nothing else I'll post some pictures from Louisiana by the time I get back.