Stirring piece at The Email Activist summarizing the story thus far re: absence of WMDs in Iraq, and the total public apathy about it. We bombed the hell out of a country and were wrong about the reasons why we did it. And no one seems to care. This is serious stuff, but you’d think from watching the news that Lacie Petersen was more important/interesting than 3,000 dead innocent Iraqis.

The piece goes on to connect our collective apathy to right-wing media control. A recent CNN piece on the absence of WMDs stepped through a long list of reasons why we haven’t found a smoking gun, but did not even mention the possiblity that there were no WMDS to begin with. Feed the public a steady diet of subtle manipulation and this is what you get:

A recent CNN-USA Today poll revealed that nearly 80% of Americans believe that the war was justified even in the absence of WMDs.

Sums up with an interesting example/argument showing why claims that the media is left-manipulated are false:

The Radical Right has been railing for over a decade against the biases of the “liberal media.”  But if they truly believed their own claims, then shouldn’t they be protesting with us against the loosening of media ownership regulations?  Shouldn’t they be shaking in their jackboots at the prospect of a monopolized liberal media?  Ah…but on this subject all is silent from the bad boys of talk radio and trash TV.  They seem to know the truth about who pays them and why.

Walking with Miles in the stroller last night, came across a box of free LPs on the sidewalk, one of which was The Celibate Rifles’ “The Turgid Miasma of Existence” — one of the great album titles of all time. Turntable is packed so haven’t yet listened, but sure came in handy for swooping a hornet out of the house this morning.

Because life is rich, the hottest days of the year mount as we prepare to move. Just want to flop over sack out, but must keep packing. The bummer part is that the heat wave really kicked in as I applied the final layer of acrylic to the floors. The idea is to let it pool up, then let gravity work out the irregularities and bubbles as it dries. But in the heat, it dries faster, i.e. with imperfections. Not terrible, just not the icing on the cake I was hoping for. Tomorrow expected to challenge Oakland’s all-time record of 103 degrees.

Historically, students send their resumes to the jschool. Assistants key them into Quark for a publication called the “facebook.” Then other assistants copy resumes out of Quark and into Dreamweaver, format them manually, and post to the web. Time and energy wasted in every direction. I’ve been building a web-based database that lets students input their own resumes. The database will then feed both Quark and the student resumes portion of the site. Because a lot of this will be pasting out of MS Word, had to deal with the smart/curly quotes problem.

Took a while to figure out that the quotes were represented by HTML entities #8220; and #8221. “Smart” dashes were 8211. The final solution looked like this:

$foo = str_replace(”&#8220″, “\”", $bar);

Repeat for right quote and smart dash, for each affected variable. Also set up browser-based image uploading, so students can upload their own faces.

Matt and Trey Stone of South Park etc. are creating a new movie called Team America, this time using marionettes as actors rather than cardboard cutouts. A nod of respect to Thunderbirds Are Go! A $20 million nod.

“Our cast will be deliberately made of wood, but that will only be taking to the extreme what is evident in many Hollywood movies right now,” Variety quoted Matt Stone as saying about the movie.

Thanks Sean.

Up at crack of dawn to apply acrylic to floors this morning and tomorrow, and after work as well. All told there will be three thin and three thick coats. On way back home this morning, car started to sputter and choke, running on three cylinders. Mechanic can’t take it till tomorrow. Amy tried to rent a car, they brought it over, but it wouldn’t accomodate the baby seat. Borrowed neighbor’s car instead. Will and Sage blow back into town and as quickly back out. Marina had her twins today - Abigail and Claire — not sure yet whether they’re identical. We reserved a moving truck three weeks ago for this Saturday’s move. Today called to confirm it and they had had no record (despite our confirmation #). More digging, turns out the central office at Budget has promised the same truck to seven people, but doesn’t even know where the truck is — they have to call everyone and tell them their weekend moves are flummoxed. Found another truck locally, just in time. Amy and I both have caught Miles’ head cold - he’s a regular snot factory the last three days. And his front teeth are coming in, so he’s double whammied. Preparing to move birdhouse hosting to a temporary network during the move (expect some downtime Thursday night). Got the news yesterday that in addition to the crack house up the street that’s been making neighborhood life crummy the past few months, we now have actual machine gun violence a few blocks away — getting out just in the nick of time. Read today that according to the EPA, 40% of the nation’s waterways are unfit for fishing, swimming, etc. G5s are out.

Floors after three days of sanding, then after a couple coats of clear acrylic. Wish I had taken a “before” shot.

Day three sanding floors. So many layers to this job. Belt sander. Orbital edge sander. Vibrating edge sander. Hand blocks. Three grits of sandpaper for each — 60, 100, 120. Difficult corners. Putty. Emptying sawdust catch bags laden with varnish-saturated dust. Eyes puffy and irritated this morning. Endless trips to hardware store and rental place for fuses, sandpaper, tarps, tape, snacks for friends who drop by to help, back to house for forgotten tools.

But there’s something just right about tackling a huge project the minute escrow closes — sweat equity goes right in (literally — drops of sweat will be entombed forever in the raw floors tomorrow when acrylic goes on). Becoming familiar with every nook and cranny, eye-to-eye with cobwebs, glitches, anomalies.

The closets were the real test. The belt sander won’t fit. But the bag on the orbital doesn’t seal properly, and tends to fall off if knocked sideways, which happens frequently in the small confines. When the bag pops off, the powerful blower throws plumes of sawdust in your face. You recoil, letting go, and the unit spins like a helicopter blade, wrapping its cord around itself. The room fills with dust and smoke. Cuss. Regroup. Vacuum. Retie. Duct tape. Carry on. Our closet floors will look dynamite.

Chris, Andrew, Mike, Roger, Paula, thanks all for your generous help these past few days. Like an old-fashioned barn raising, friends coming by to raise high the roofbeams.

Through the mask of sawdust, I am falling in love with the house we just bought, in an intimate way I don’t think I could if we had had the floors done professionally.

The best car commercial ever made has no computer generated graphics … The top 100 hoaxes of all time … Is there a secret city under Tokyo? … TinyURL.com transforms hella long URLs into wee teensy ones for use in email etc, for free … Know your philosophical fallacies … She’s a flight risk (read older posts before more recent ones to grok what’s going on) … Things my girlfriend and I argue about (no, Amy and I don’t argue like this) … Take a deep breath, they’re only forklift extensions … Mad props to Apple for taking up the mantle with indie labels, and for keeping the playing field level … Wing gives The Shaggs a run for their money … Know a migraine sufferer? These headache tips are indispensable … Turn boring old hot dogs into octodogs … Six-Toed One-Eyed Battery Operated Laser Sloths.

Spent all day behind the wheel of a Bona ProSand 8, a highly efficient, surprisingly graceful, 115-lb floor-sanding beast. Almost zero dust - the built-in vacuum is voracious. The work is tedious, meditative, exhausting. Coarse grades today and tomorrow, finer grades Sunday. We have not yet upgraded the electrical system, but the sander draws a heap of juice. Every time I strain the motor on a bump, a 15 amp fuse blows. Learning to finesse it, but going through fuses like no tomorrow. Better than burning down the house.

Amy painting shelves and cupboards with Miles on her back. It’s a family thing.

The new place has a cubby in the kitchen clearly designed to house a microwave oven. I’ve never lived with a microwave (astonishing but true!), though my grandmother had one of the first — the Amana Radarange — in the early 70s (my mother always insisted we play in another room when it was running, lest we become sterile from the radiation). Amy grew up with one but hasn’t had one since high school. No real reason for either of us, other than habit and stubborn-ness. I think a part of us likes resisting all the mod cons. But now I’m sort of interested in getting one, though it would be tantamount to an act of resignation at this point in life. Amy remains staunchly opposed.

Matthew’s memorial concert was tonight. So much packing to do, so much prep work for tomorrow, and was in the middle of taking the aquarium apart, almost didn’t go, but somehow needed to. Amy was teaching so took Miles in the Baby Bjorn (aka the Baby Bjork). Knew we wouldn’t make it the whole night, but just wanted him to experience the love in the house, and to hear some great improv. Was glad I did. Place was packed. First thing we sat down to was a trio — shakuhachi, alto sax, clarinet — tender and exploratory. Miles just cooed gently and made small noises. People around him were delighted. He lights up rooms wherever he goes. He got feisty a while later and we had to leave, but it was just enough.

Tons going on matthewsperry.org lately - it’s been a challenge maintaining that site with everything else going on.

Amy and I retrieved the keys to our new house at 1pm, then spent the rest of the day bouncing off the walls, making lists, having ideas, trying to prioritize. Heating and plumbing guy came at 2pm and the first foible arose: to install forced air heating they need to get the heating appliance under the house, which requires a 20″x30″ opening. Our crawlspace entrances are too small and can’t be enlarged, so we’ll need to have a new one put in. And so the story begins. Tomorrow the big sanding job begins. Here’s to us!

This entry initially posted as audio from cell phone in the empty, echo-y house:

audblog audio post

The feature piece on comparative weblog systems I wrote for the July issue of MacWorld is now on newstands (page 76). A version of the article is online, but sans graphics and screenshots, sidebars, and feature comparison charts for blogging systems and for Mac-based posting tools. The article covers pMachine, Movable Type, Radio Userland, GeekLog, iBlog, LiveJournal, and Blogger Pro.

Amazing how much harder it was to do a feature piece with a baby in the house than without. Some of my online friends are “accidentally” screenshotted, and I even managed to squeak a teensy image of Amy, Miles and me in there.

In The Chicago Tribune (free registration required):

“The federal government is America’s biggest polluter and the Department of Defense is the government’s worst offender. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, unexploded ordnance waste can be found on 16,000 military ranges across the U.S. and more than half may contain biological or chemical weapons. In total, the Pentagon is responsible for more than 21,000 potentially contaminated sites and, according to the EPA, the military may have poisoned as much as 40 million acres, a little larger than Florida. That result might be considered an act of war if committed by a foreign power. ”

Webnet — the group of all UC Berkeley campus webmasters — had a session today on RSS / XML in practice. They invited me to speak on ways I’ve delivered RSS publishing to the jschool “for free” by reformulating various student sites to use Movable Type as a content management system. Did a 30 minute presentation, spoke alongside representatives from IST and the Interactive University project.

Interesting argument by Tig Tillinghast:

Microsoft makes more money on Office per Mac sold than they do per PC sold. And they claim that Internet Explorer’s ubiquity is not to foster monopoly, but because the market demands it and it’s necessary for integration with Office. By this logic, IE/Mac is a key part of MS’ ability to generate profit from the Mac. So then how do they square that position with their recent decision to drop IE/Mac?

My take: Safari has proven that Apple and the open source community together can build a better, far faster browser, without Microsoft’s help. Technology isn’t the issue. Politics is. Potential switchers want comfort food, want to know that IE is waiting for them on the Mac side (even if it’s slow). Microsoft’s move punishes Apple for threatening the monopoly by pulling a security blanket away from potential customers.

Just returned from the title company, where Amy and I signed about 4″ of documents, closing escrow on the house. It’s been such an insane month, we’ve barely been able to digest the whole home purchase thing. But ready or not, here it comes… taking keys in a few days. Scary to sign your life away like that. It’s the American Dream, brother!, or something like that. But we are very excited. Summer projects yawn out in front of us.

Amy and Miles wanted to color me a card for my first Father’s Day, but Miles isn’t quite ready for that. “Color like the wind!” Amy told him, trying to get the job done before I woke up. But he had never held a crayon before. He chewed on it for a while and then flung it aside. Repeat for each color in the box.

Installed Gallery last night, both for birdhouse use and for matthewsperry.org, then made a little gallery of images of my brother, dad, miles and myself for father’s day.

Miles is a nut.
He has a rubber butt.
And every time he turns around
He goes putt-putt.

Christmas in June: Found out today there’s a very high chance I’ll soon be able to replace the Win2K server that runs the J-School with an Xserve. Possibly dual. I’m floating on this news. Getting very tired of the tools I want to use not working properly with Windows (e.g. the bad netpbm port to Windows just hung up my attempt to get Gallery installed, and the search engine I want to deploy is only free if you aren’t serving from Windows), and even more tired of Windows consuming itself. It’s appropriate for rock stars to choke on their own vomit — it isn’t appropriate for operating systems. The Xserve will integrate with our systems much more smoothly, and I’ll be able to sleep better at night (like Miles has nothing to do with that :). The conversion should be a great summer project … as if I had a shortage of summer projects.

Is Hans the cat or the boy? Which of them is the silly?

Hydrogen fuel cells may not be the faultless fuel panacea we’ve dreamed them to be. As it turns out, mass hydrogen production will result inevitably in a lot of runaway gas which will damage the ozone and create “enigmatic ‘noctilucent clouds’ that would shine at night far above the planet’s surface.”

Now we have to decide whether we prefer greenhouse gases from fossil fuels or sunburns from depleted ozone. All that glitters is not gaseous. Or something disappointing like that.

Registered and set up matthewsperry.org on birdhouse hosting. Posted the call for witnesses and info on the upcoming memorial concert. The concert info has also gone out on PR Newswire and is all over the net — here it is on Yahoo!

Update: the site is now pretty much designed and is off and running. Ideally this will become the locus of all new info / events related to Matthew.

Attended a demo co-sponsored by Apple on Final Cut Pro 4 yesterday — we’re mostly interested in it for its bundled audio editing application, which may mean an affordable way out of the OS9 quagmire (we can’t upgrade the lab to OS X because we need Pro Tools free, which only runs in OS 9 and won’t run in Classic — considering dumping Pro Tools altogether). The demo had impressive moments, but also a lot of cheese, and overall nothing compelling enough to us to warrant the upgrade. We’re thrown back on other possibilities - switching to Bias Peak, or just having students dual boot the machines (an eventuality we had hoped to avoid).

Anyway. When we got in the car to head to the event, coworker handed me a map he had printed out and it pointed to… Powell and Vallejo in Emeryville — the exact intersection where Matthew was killed. “Why do you have this?” I asked. “That’s where the event is.” And it dawned on me that of all the places in the Bay Area where this event could have been held, it was being thrown 100 feet from where Matthew was killed. Coincidences mounted. Only ~25 people inside, but one of them was an old friend A and I had sort of lost touch with. Strange afternoon.

My patience for telemarketing grows shorter with every call. Billboard advertising may ruin my view of the world, but calling me at home to sell me a product steals my time and invades my privacy. Realizing I’ve trapped an unsuspecting rat, I sometimes use the opportunity to engage the caller in a discussion of Kant’s Categorical Imperative.

Me: You know what would really work for me? How about you give me your home phone number and I’ll call you there at my convenience. I am, after all, the customer.

Them: Well sir, this will only take a minute, and…

Me: I wonder what it would be like if every business in the Yellow Pages called people in their homes to sell them their products. The home phone would become unusable. Do you really intend that every business should do what you’re doing right now? Do you understand that this form of marketing, if performed by all vendors, would literally make home life unlivable for the very customers you’re trying to reach?

Act so that the maxim [determining motive of the will] may be capable of becoming a universal law for all rational beings.

Them: [stone silence]

Me: Telemarketing is immoral.

And thereabouts the caller generally gives up on me. But this morning, as I took an unsolicited call from MCI with a towel wrapped around my waist, the telemarketer responded with this:

Them: Sir, it’s the American way.

I was dumbfounded. I should have responded by asking what part of “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” telemarketing came under. Instead I lost my head and just started yelling at him. I don’t know what. Something about how can he sleep at night, etc. It was kind of nuts. Amy got worried for me, wondered what I was doing to my blood pressure. I suppose she’s right, but damn it felt good. Cathartic.

Phillip Greenlief sends along the following:

Matthew Sperry Memorial Concert
Thursday, June 19th, 8pm
21 Grand - 449 B 23rd Street, Oakland, CA
(510) 444-7263
21Grand@21Grand.org

One of the Bay Area’s brightest musical lights, bassist Matthew Sperry, was struck down in a fatal accident by a truck while riding his bicycle to work. Many members of the SF Bay Area New Music Scene have aligned to present a concert to raise funds for Matthew’s wife Stacia, and Lila, their adorable two year girl.

Admission is sliding scale, $5 - $50, no one turned away for lack of funds.

Matthew moved to the SF Bay Area a few years ago from Seattle. He was most recently featured in the Victoria Theater’s production of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”. He has recorded with Tom Waits, David Byrne, and a host of musicans from the SF Bay Area New Music scene. For a complete bio, go to: http://www.oneroom.org/mattsperry/resume.html

The following musicians will play to pay homage to our dear friend.
(in alphabetical order)

Ashley Adams
Aaron Bennett
Angela Coon - Jenya Chernoff - John Shiurba
Philip Gelb
Phillip Greenlief
Vinny Golia
Morgan Guberman - Andrew Voigt
Brett Larner
Scott Looney
Moe!
Dan Plonsey’s Daniel Popsicle
Scott Rosenberg
Dave Slusser - Ron Thompson duo
Damon Smith
Matt Sperry Trio (Gino Robair, Matt Ingalls, Tim Perkis, John Shiurba)
Christopher Williams
Francis Wong

Please help us spread the word about this important event in our musical community. Leap Frog, Matthew’s former employer, will be setting up a fund for donations. We will keep you updated about this in the coming weeks.

I am at your service, should you have any further questions.
Peace,

Phillip Greenlief
c/o Evander Music
PO Box 22158
Oakland, CA 94623-9991
(510) 652-7914
pgsaxo@pacbell.net
www.evandermusic.com

Matthew’s memorial service was held at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland yesterday.

We should all live our lives such that the people around us are inspired to throw such a remembrance when we pass. I have never been to a memorial like this — great musicians from all over the country came to play things they had played with Matt before, to improvise, to speak, to remember, to pray. Parents, siblings, friends voiced their feelings. Stacia spoke courageously. The cast of Hedwig played two songs from the show, which left everyone with Kleenex in hand. Little Lila was hoisted on shoulders to see friends and family clapping to Klezmer music. I held small sleeping Miles in my arms and felt so grateful for his existence, our relationship. Friends showed their love for one another. We all cried, and started to move through the wall toward acceptance of Matthew’s loss. At the end of the service, we saw Stacia smiling a bit - the first time in days, so gratifying.

The existence of the chapel blew many of us away - as if a big chunk of old Europe had landed in the middle of Oakland, virtually hidden. Of course, if I had made it to one of Matthew’s performances inside the chapel, its beauty would not have come as such a surprise — he played there twice, with ensembles scattered throughout its Borges-ian labyrinths, where tall banks of urns are interspersed with indoor gardens, sculptures, excerpts from texts of various religions. Dappled sunlight, ferns, total serenity. At the time, it seemed Matthew was playing all over the place, there would be lots of chances. Don’t let chances pass you by, they may not come again.

Matthew loved the idea of urns shaped like books — the bookends of one’s life - and some of his ashes will be stored in a set. More ashes will go to water.

Later, to Stacia’s cousins’ house to sit Shiva (Matthew and Stacia are Jewish, many of us there were not), continue the remembrance, eat good food. Handed out sound board recordings from the SF Hedwig cast performance. Showed Stacia a picture of Matthew in Pensacola 1988 with Grecian Formula 69, looking so much younger (because he was) (Matthew is on the right). Stacia laughed and commented that his knees looked knobbly.

Now that the memorial is past and well-wishers begin to clear out, the hard part begins for Stacia and Lila - how to support themselves, pay mortgage, raise a girl without a father, fund Lila’s education, and so on. A recurring memorial concert is planned to help raise funds for the family, and friends will be pulling together to do what we can.

Farewell Matthew - we love you and miss you. But as Matthew’s brother put it yesterday:

You are vibration, you are music.