Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Cos' LiveJournal:

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Thursday, January 1st, 2037
12:00 am	Other Places I Post I have two other LJs: cosmusic, coslinks See what links I've been reading on del.icio.us (coslinks),  and what links I've been promoting on reddit (cos) (if you use reddit, please check occasionally and rate my links up?) Photos: Some on my old web site, newer ones on Flickr (cospics) Videos: YouTube (youcos) Where are you? pin your location on the map, add yourself to my frappr group, and fill out my LJ poll. All Livejournals cos (19 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 13th, 2009
10:40 am	What car should I buy? I meant my current car to be "temporary", then four and a half years passed. It's time: I'm not about to move, or change jobs, or spend half the summer away from home, or work on a big campaign in the next few months, so I can do stuff like find a car. What should I look at? Whatever I get, I want to keep for a long time. At least 200k miles, maybe 300k or more. New or used is okay. I don't plan to resell for a long time. It needs to basically work, and stay reliable as long as I maintain it regularly and fix things as soon as I know they need fixing. I don't care if it looks cool or feels great to drive or any of those things, just reasonable. I do want to be able to get up steep dirt roads in Vermont and the Berkshires and such places in bad weather. That doesn't necessarily mean all wheel drive. My previous car, a Saturn SL2 with front wheel drive and "traction control" (ability to have the two front wheels turn separately) was very good at it. My current car, a Saturn SL1 (less power) with front wheel drive and no traction control, is not good at it. I'd take a front wheel w/traction again. And I want fuel efficiency, particularly on highways and country roads, which account for the majority of my driving. I've been getting 33-39mpg on those kinds of roads in my current Saturn, though it's not rated that high. I'd like something that good or better. Edit: I'd also like to have as much space as a Saturn SL2/SL1, for people and for stuff. More space would be fine, but not needed. It'd be annoying to have to adjust to a car with less space. Suggestions? (38 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
8:52 am	Ginsburg is close, but not quite For the first time ever, a silly OkCupid quiz result on my LJ: Your result for Which Supreme Court Justice Are You Test... You are Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ... here's the photo and text from the quiz ... Take Which Supreme Court Justice Are You Test The reason I post it here is to say: Close, but not quite. I'm pleased, certainly, that of the current court, it picked Ginsburg for me. She's my current favorite. But this quiz would've done much better with a larger repertoire than just the current court, and then it might've sussed out who I really am: William Brennan. I started reading opinions of the court in the 1990s, and two Justices in particular struck me, again and again, in a positive and enriching way: Marshall and Brennan. Thurgood Marshall was the one who showed me new ways of thinking. He was the one whose votes sometimes made me think "wait what?!?!" and then, as I read what he wrote, start to understand how he saw the case, and why it made sense. Brennan was different. Brennan was the one whose vote I knew before I had to look it up, every time, because I simply had to ask myself, "how would I wish this case decided?" I'd read his opinions for a different reason: they made me think "Yes, this!" long before LiveJournal :) I'd look at the deep examinations of opinions that were essentially my own, and see where they led in greater depth. I'd silently cheer triumphantly, in my head, to see a brilliant new way of explaining some belief of mine, that I'd never have thought of. With Brennan on the court, I felt like I had a personal representative, like I was on the court without having to do the work. P.S. Which Justice does this quiz pick for you? (19 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, June 5th, 2009
10:11 am	Tank Man Yesterday was the 20th aniversary of June 4th, 1989 - the Chinese crackdown on a massive protest in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. Although we remember June 4th as the climax, the military crackdown actually took several days, beginning on June 3rd - which was also the day the Ayatollah Khomeini died, and a massive gas explosion on the Trans-Siberian Railway destroyed two trains and killed 575 people. It was not a slow news day.* Today is the aniversary of the photo that came to represent June 4th, 1989, but was actually taken the following day, as the military crackdown continued after Tiananmen Square itself was cleared. At the time, we saw it on TV: the man standing in the street as a column of tanks approach and then stop. The lead tank trying to go around him to the left and right a few times, but he keeps moving into its path. Finally, after about a minute, he climbs onto the tank, leans into the compartment to apparently say something (or just look?), and walks off. Tank Man became a symbol of individual courage against the military machine of authoritarianism, as well as the icon representing the Chinese protests and movement of 1989. That fall Shen Tong, one of the leaders of the Tiananmen Square protesters, started college at Brandeis: He had already been accepted for a Wien Scholarship at Brandeis, and had a passport and visa which allowed him to escape to the US. Brandeis became a center of Chinese dissidents and activisim in the few years after June 4th.** That fall I also started college at Brandeis, and I attended a big conference on the Chinese protests and prodemocracy movement that was held in a building almost adjacent to my dorm. Shen Tong was the keynote, of course, and I remember listening to him speak, but I don't specifically remember what he said. What sticks out most in my memory is a panel presentation on how the protests and crackdown were portrayed in the Chinese press... ... apparently, the famous photo of Tank Man was ubiquitous on Chinese TV as well. Although the entire incident has been whitewashed from Chinese history in the decades since, back in 1989 it was big news, and so was Tank Man. Here in the west, he represented courage and standing up to authority. In China, said the professor who had recently been there, he meant something else: He was the Chinese Government's symbol of the peacefulness of their military. How, even in the midst of it all, a column of tanks stopped for a lone unarmed man in the street, and did not move forward until he walked away of his own accord. I was temporarily stunned, but then I realized: You know what? They were right, too. A column of armed tanks did stop for a lone unarmed man in the street. He represents that, too. Truth is like the blind men's elephant, but even though we have the capacity to look at other parts of it, we often don't notice they're there. Yesterday, a new photograph of tank man was published for the first time. Take from street level, it shows a couple of other protesters fleeing, with him in the background standing alone on the street, waiting for the tanks. It tells a related but somewhat different story than the images we've seen. What about all the stories that could be told of this incident, that we're never going to see, because a photographer didn't happen to be in the right spot to capture them? Or because a propogandist didn't happen to exist with the vested interest in ferretting out that particular interpretation? * My memory keeps telling me that a fourth very big thing happened that day, but I can't remember what it was. ** For example, the Chinese dissident movement in diaspora had a weekly radio show co-produced in Chicago and at WBRS at Brandeis. They were on shortly after a show I did on Saturdays, and some weeks they'd just play the tapes from Chicago, so they often asked me to cover for them and I'd sit there reading or doing homework while playing tapes of Chinese announcers and interviews, all speaking very rapidly, with a music bit from the New World Symphony in between each clip. [ Crossposed to Open Salon ] (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 17th, 2009
1:25 am	Quote of the night The lead singer puts on a black leather jacket, picks up a strapless guitar ("anyone got a strap-on?" he asks), pulls over a chair, puts his leg up on it and rests the guitar on his thigh. I wrote this song when I was living at the Chelsea Hotel with my buddy Robert Mapplethorpe We'd just formed a queer poet punk band, called Pink Narcissus The band was soon to disappear into air, but the song remained and reappeared on the bee-stung lips of Michelle Pfeiffer. This song is for people who thinks cock tastes sweeter on the wrong side of the tracks. Then he and the band (drums, piano, upright bass) launch into a cover of Cool Rider from Grease 2. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 14th, 2009
10:27 am	When did you see this post? Edit: First question is all in US/Eastern, even though I only explicitly labelled a few of the options. If you're on the other side of the date line and your Friday morning is US/Eastern's Thursday afternoon or evening/night, translate to US/Eastern. Poll #1399807 weekdaymorningreadingtime Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All When did you first see this post? View Answers Thursday before 11am US/Eastern 46 (24.3%) Thursday 11am-1pm US/Eastern 62 (32.8%) Thursday 1pm-6pm US/Eastern 29 (15.3%) Thursday 6pm-9pm US/Eastern 18 (9.5%) Thursday eve/night after 9pm, but before going to sleep 14 (7.4%) Friday morning 5 (2.6%) Later than Friday morning, but before Sunday morning 11 (5.8%) May 17-23, 2009 2 (1.1%) After May 23, 2009 2 (1.1%) I saw it earlier but didn't vote, and now I don't remember 0 (0.0%) When you first saw it, what time zone were you in? View Answers US/Eastern 134 (71.3%) US/Central 8 (4.3%) US/Mountain 3 (1.6%) US/Pacific 31 (16.5%) Other time zone in the Americas or Hawaii 3 (1.6%) GMT 4 (2.1%) GMT+1 (much of Europe, some of Africa) 3 (1.6%) GMT+2 or +3 (eastern Europe, Russian, mideast, some of Africa) 0 (0.0%) Other 2 (1.1%) Edit: Please ignore Daylight Savings vs. Standard Time adjustments for the second question - I'm labelling the "native" time zones. (40 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, May 1st, 2009
4:53 pm	Boston music twitter I started a twitter account for Boston area music at http://twitter.com/musicboston Because twitter is so low-barrier and low-impact, I'll be posting pretty much every show I know of in Boston that has a band I like, or that I'm going to, or that I think is interesting and worth notice, as well as stuff about radio shows or stations I like, venues, good new albums, etc. But mostly local shows. Even if you don't use twitter, you can easily check that link whenever you want to see what shows I've posted about recently. Pass it on. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
10:40 am	Facebook vote: a few more hours. The Facebook Terms of Service vote ends at noon pacific time (3pm eastern) today. About 610,000 votes so far. Edit: Vote closed with about 660,000 votes, about 75% in favor of the new terms. Facebook will adopt the new Terms of Service after audit of the vote is complete. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
9:33 pm	Facebook vote ends at noon tomorrow Remember the Facebook scandal a few months ago when it was noticed that they had changed their Terms of Service, and among other things had removed the bit that says they lose rights to your content when you delete it? Facebook reverted their changes and said "oops, big misunderstanging, sorry!" According to them, they'd updated it to allow them to do anything they might need to do, and they made it overly broad, allowing to do all sorts of things they didn't want to do and had no intention of ever doing. And they didn't realize people would care and get upset about that. So, they promised to ask for comments and write a new Terms of Service proposal. Well, it's done, and you can read it here. Now they're effectively saying "put up or shut up": They're holding a vote: Go with this proposal, or return to the updated rules they introduced late last year that caused all the ruckus. If you had a Facebook account on February 26, 2009, and still do, then you can vote here. Voting closes at noon tomorrow, Thursday April 23nd. And there's a catch: The vote is binding only if at least 30% of "active users" vote, where the number of "active users" is defined as the number of users who logged into Facebook in the 30 days preceding February 26th. Last I checked, only about 450,000 people had voted, which I'm pretty sure is well below the quorum. In other words, to get the improved Terms of Service, we need more voters. (30 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
11:58 am	Atlanta, GA street name generator Pick one word from each column (optional) (optional) (optional) New Old North South East West Peachtree Industrial Battle Ridge Hills Corners Dunwoody Road Parkway Boulevard Avenue Street Place Way Lane Walk Drive Circle NE NW SE SW It's okay to include from both the first column and fifth column in the same name - names like "West Peachtree Street NW" do in fact exist. I'm not sure I got everything for the middle column, so if you see something I've missed, let me know. Note: "Peachtree Industrial" cannot technically be generated from this chart, but appears to be a real name for a small road near (but not the same as) Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, according to Google Maps. (24 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 13th, 2009
1:44 pm	Want to live here? I have the first floor of a 3-family in Central Square, Cambridge, a couple of blocks from the red line. It's the place mzrowan used to own before me. The owners of the third floor recently emailed me to say they want to sell this summer, and may put out a listing soon. Anyone I know want to live here? (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
2:06 am	Know anyone in Vermont? Vermont's legislature passed a bill legalizing same sex marriage last week. On Monday, Vermont's Governor Douglas vetoed it. On Tuesday morning, the VT House and Senate will vote on overriding his veto, and the vote in the House is likely to be very close. If you know someone in Vermont who cares about this, their representative needs to hear from them. The Vermont Senate voted 26-4 for this, so they will likely vote to override. The Vermont House voted 95-52; overriding a veto requires 100 votes. It's a real possibility, but it could easily fall short, especially since many of the reps who voted yes have gotten upset phone calls about it (even though polls show a majority of Vermonters support same sex marriage rights). Some more phone calls first thing in the morning (or messages left before 9am) could tip the balance. If you're in Vermont: Find your Representative by clicking on your city or town. Find out how your Representative voted, and their phone number. If they voted Yes: "I'd like to thank Representative [Name] for supporting equal rights for same sex couples. Please vote to override the Governor's veto." If they voted No:"I'm disappointed that Representative [Name] did not support equal rights for same sex couples, but I hope the Representative will bring closure to this issue now, in light of the overwhelming support it has gotten, and vote to override the Governor's veto." Please IM/text/email this (or a link to this post) to people you know in Vermont! Edit: House voted 100-49 to override the veto. Phew, that was close! (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
5:23 pm	White House switchboard 202-456-1414 is the White House switchboard line. If you call it... 40% chance: You will automatically tranfer to the White House Comment Line 30% chance: You'll get a person, but sometime during the first or second sentence (of yours or theirs), you'll be instantly transferred to the Comment Line mid-sentence 30% chance: You'll get a person and actually have a chance to tell them what you're calling about. Then: 1 out of 3 times (10% of total): They'll transfer you to the Comment Line regardless of whether it's appropriate. 2 out of 3 times (20% of total): They'll transfer you somewhere other than the Comment Line. This is based on about 35 minutes of calling, until I finally reached the appropriate department. So I may be biasing these numbers in favor of "transfer somewhere other than the Comment Line", since my termination condition for the experiment fit in that set. The odds may actually be below 20%. However! 202-456-1111 is the White House Comment Line. If you call it... ~3% chance: Someone will take your comment ~97% chance: Busy signal So the Switchboard number is actually a great way to bypass the busy signal and get through to the comment line. And usually, you won't even have to ask - you'll just get to the comment line. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, February 6th, 2009
10:43 am	In case you were wondering why I asked On Sunday Molly was telling Val and I about this "friend" she had back in California, who invited her to come hang out and maybe go out. Oh, and by the way, since you're coming over, said this friend, why not bring some of that software you were going to try installing on my computer? Sure, said Molly, I can install it while we're hanging out. She went over, with the software, and started... and a whole bunch of friend's Hollywood-ish friends came over, and friend said you don't mind finishing that software while we all go out, do you? After our appropriate gasps of shock, Molly struggled to complete the sentence: "I can't believe she had the ... the ... what's the word for it? the nerve?" And right then, it came to me: I can't believe she had the blagojevich to suggest that! We all agree this word should spread, so I indulged my habit of submitting to urbandictionary. It was while I was writing that entry, and trying to think of some good examples, that I made my recent post asking for stories. So now you know what made me think of it. P.S. Urbandictionary has a bunch of other definitions of blagojevich, but mine's clearly the best one :) So please vote it up! (21 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
12:44 pm	Dean for HHS: follow the link Howard Dean for Secretary of Health and Human Services (posted on howard_dean)
Sunday, February 1st, 2009
3:42 pm	tell me a story Tell me a story of something someone said or did that was so outrageously beyond chutzpah, it could only have happened if the person in question had not only a breathtaking sense of entitlement, but also no idea how out of line they were. They didn't just have a lot of nerve - they had no clue they had a lot of nerve, and observers could barely believe it happened. (47 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
6:12 pm	"Tone, Truth, and the Democratic Party" Old, but worth revisiting now, for some insight into the way our new president thinks about and practices politics... More than a year before he decided to run for president - before he was even considering it, based on what I've read - Barack Obama as a new US Senator in his first year in office was criticized by some people on Democratic-leaning blogs, regarding the confirmation of Justice Roberts to the Supreme Court. Obama voted against Roberts, but he spoke out in support of some other Democratic Senators who voted for the confirmation, and he did not attempt to organize a filibuster. Because of the way Congressional Democrats had acquiesced to so many bad things the Bush administration had done in the previous five years, many people were upset at anything they saw as not fighting hard enough, not standing up to Bush and trying to stop him as he made yet another bad decision that would harm the country. Obama's actions seemed to many (though far from all) people on the lefty blogs to be part of this pattern. Barack Obama, it turns out, was carefully reading the major blogs. In response to the criticsms of his conduct on the Roberts confirmation, he created an account for himself on Daily Kos, and wrote this essay - not only explaining why he did what he did in this instance, but his larger political outlook, his views on political strategy, and how his actions fit those views: Tone, Truth, and the Democratic Party In his followup post, where he answered some of the comments, he added, "Finally, some of you wondered whether I wrote the post myself. I did." Now that he's become president, and his term begins with a high-profile "negotiation" with Congressional Republicans, and everyone's looking at what he says and does and commenting on it, I think it's well worth going back to this post for some context. (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 23rd, 2009
12:30 pm	Ravens in the Library Near the end of Arisia last weekend, I ran into shadesong and ktpinto in the "Hot Chicks with Books" room on dealer row, and somehow the topic of urban fantasy came up. I asked ktpinto if she'd read anything by one of my favorites in that genre, Holly Black (thanks, mzrowan, for introducing me to those books!). K had not heard of Holly, but shadesong piped in to say that she and Holly Black were going to appear in the same anthology soon, and handed me a flyer about Ravens in the Library. There's here name, on the same list as Holly Black's - that was enough to make me want to buy it. But look! Featuring Tales by: Neil Gaiman! Charles de Lint. Francesca Lia Block! It's a limited run, to raise funds to pay off s00j's medical bills (she's also got story in the book), and they will only sell enough copies to cover those expenses. If you want a copy of this book, preorder it now. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
10:55 am	Cat Fur If you have sheddy cats... What do you use to get cat hair off clothes and bedsheets? What do you use to prevent cat fur from building up on beds & couches? (33 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 16th, 2009
3:13 pm	refrigerator efficiency At Solarfest a couple of years ago, I attended a home energy efficiency workshop. One of the questions from the audience was about saving energy by not opening the refrigerator frequently, and his answer was: it doesn't really matter. I was just reminded of this when my housemate mentioned feeling bad about not planning ahead when she's cooking, so she opens and closes the fridge repeatedly. A lot of people think this wastes a lot of energy, and it actually doesn't. The guy who spoke at Solarfest told us about some actual research that had been done: Same-model refrigerators were loaded with the same amount of food. A "control" fridge was left closed for several days, while the "experimental" fridge had its door opened far more frequently than even the most scatterbrained person would do in normal life, and held open for longer than people usually hold the door open. At the end, with the refrigerators cooled down to their set temperature, they compared the amount of electricity used by both (they'd had meters attached), and found the difference to be insignificant. It makes sense if you think about it. Refrigerators cool the air inside, but cooling air isn't the point; the point is to transfer some heat out of the stuff that's in the fridge, and keep excess heat from getting back into the stuff. Keeping air cool is a means to an end. Air itself has very little heat content, because it's so thin. Most of the heat a fridge is concerned with is in the much denser solid/liquid food. If you put warm food in, some of its heat will transfer into the cooler air, and the fridge will have to continuously cool that air until all of the excess heat has come out of the food, which happens slowly. When you open the door, all you do is cycle a bit of cool air out, forcing the fridge to re-cool some air, but that takes very little energy. Since heat transfers much more slowly into solids, very little heat gets into your food while you have the door open. After you close the door, the fridge quickly re-cools some air, expending very little energy. There's hardly any extra heat to transfer out of the solid stuff, so that air stays cold. To really "waste" energy, you would need to do more than cycle a bit of air out. You'd need to take the cold stuff out of the fridge, and replace it with warmer stuff. But that's the reason you have a refrigerator in the first place. If you want use your refrigerator more efficiently, don't worry about how often you open the door. Instead, if you have food items out that you plan to put back into the fridge, and that you don't need to warm up before you use them, put them back into the fridge before they have a chance to sit out for a while and get warm. Stuff matters much more than air. Edit: Simplified way of thinking about it: What matters is the transfer of heat (not temperature) into the fridge; that's what it uses energy to get rid of. You can't easily move much heat into the fridge with air; you mostly do it with solids and liquids. (13 Comments |Comment on this)