The Substantially Similar Weblog

All the “pages” linked from my weblog — for example, my “about” page and my PGP key — are broken. I’ve posted in the WordPress Support Forums with no luck. I’m not sure when or why they stopped working, but if any readers have any suggestions of how to troubleshoot, I’d love to hear about it. Nothing relevant appears in server logs.

In the meantime, apologies if you came here trying to find out about me. I’m temporarily out of service.

(and disregards the rest)

Jonah Lehrer reports the result of a depressing but unsurprising experiment: The Facts Don’t Matter.

Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration’s prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation — the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration’s claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.

A similar “backfire effect” also influenced conservatives told about Bush administration assertions that tax cuts increase federal revenue. One group was offered a refutation by prominent economists that included current and former Bush administration officials. About 35 percent of conservatives told about the Bush claim believed it; 67 percent of those provided with both assertion and refutation believed that tax cuts increase revenue.

In a paper approaching publication, Nyhan, a PhD student at Duke University, and Reifler, at Georgia State University, suggest that Republicans might be especially prone to the backfire effect because conservatives may have more rigid views than liberals: Upon hearing a refutation, conservatives might “argue back” against the refutation in their minds, thereby strengthening their belief in the misinformation. Nyhan and Reifler did not see the same “backfire effect” when liberals were given misinformation and a refutation about the Bush administration’s stance on stem cell research.

It’s particularly interesting that the backfire effect is more pronounced with Republicans; this certainly resonates with my admittedly biased view. Better information doesn’t seem to fix the problem, either:

During the first term of Bill Clinton’s presidency, the budget deficit declined by more than 90 percent. However, when Republican voters were asked in 1996 what happened to the deficit under Clinton, more than 55 percent said that it had increased. What’s interesting about this data is that so-called “high-information” voters – these are the Republicans who read the newspaper, watch cable news and can identify their representatives in Congress – weren’t better informed than “low-information” voters.

Anyone have a better solution? Or should we just throw in the towel on democracy?

A sure sign of the long road ahead of us to pull together in this election:

Can’t we all just join forces?

[Tags]Obama, Biden, Facebook[/Tags]

Seeing John Hodgman in Flight of the Conchords reminded me of this. Does anyone else miss the show? It’s hard to believe it finished less than a year-and-a-half ago. Seems like ancient new-media history now.

A favorite episode from long before the Scrabulous kerfuffle: Scrabble.
[Tags]The Show, Flight of the Conchords, John Hodgman[/Tags]

I’ve had little time in the four years I’ve lived in Roslindale to get involved in community volunteer efforts.  My wife Rachele, however, has devoted several years to efforts such as the Roslindale Community Center, Roslindale Village Main Streets, and Roslindale Clean and Green. She has served as chair of both RCC and one of the RVMS committees.

Over the past few months, I’ve been disappointed to see the RCC board endure repeated senseless attacks by a perhaps overzealous community member, Walter Michalik, who has effectively paralyzed the organization. I have nothing personal against this guy, but I thought I could do my part here by publishing an example of an email he broadcast to the committee, which I think is embarrassing enough on its own merits to need no editorializing from me, except to say any email that starts with “just so you won’t be surprised when the IRS launches its investigation” can be neither productive nor taken seriously.

The context is a response to an announcement sent out pursuant to the Community Centers By-Laws scheduling a special meeting to discuss the recent upheaval on the Council. There’s no reason this should not be in the public record:

Rachele

Just so you won’t be surprised when the IRS launches its investigation, be advised that YOU DO NOT HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO CALL FOR A SPECIAL MEETING.  The By Laws do not allow the President/Chair to call for a Special meeting – that right is reserved for the MEMBERS to have a power over a hostile or non-performing President/Chair.  It was created by a Membership wary of annimosity within its ranks in order to protect itself from falling into a useless dysfunctional body.  That’s why our By Laws require the majority of the membership request it through the Chair and not the other way around.  So you screwed that up too.

Your continuous violation of rules and laws have proven beyond a doubt that this current Roslindale Community Center Council has violated the trust behind its IRS-designated not-for-profit status.

The failures are on so many significant levels over 6 months it is readily apparent that the Roslindale Community is better served without a Community Center Council.

There is no longer any excuse to allow the residents of Roslindale to be denied the services they deserve that you and the officers have no idea how to deliver.  Because that’s what you are supposed to do – serve the residents of Roslindale and not preseide over a self-serving board.  You’ve taken us from dysfunctional to non-functional over the past 60 days.

You and your officers have already driven away our Archdale partners and now the merger is off.  Congratulations.  You got what you wanted.

You and the officers have withheld information from the Members of the Council imposing gag orders along the way and in more than one instance spreading lies within this community.

There are so very many lapses on your part and the rest of the officers that it is very apparent that the Roslindale Community Center exists IN SPITE OF the Roslindale Community Center Council – not because of it.  It would be far better indeed, if the Center were run without the Council.

What have you done in 6 months?  All you do is avoid the work of leadership.  Please, just gracefully step aside and let a real leader emerge – or dissolve the Council and let the Center run itself under BCYF  before the IRS makes that happen.

Of course this is my stated opinion.  You can choose not to belive it.  You can huddle with a group of self-serving officers and invent excuses or change the agenda away from the message and continue with your ad hominem attacks against the messenger.  I’m thick-skinned.  Feelings aren’t important to me – services to residents are important to me.

While I have, in fact, enjoyed the confidences of others within this community and their true displesure with this Council, I will produce that to the appropriate authorities as I see fit along with the Bill of Particulars I have produced with documentation for all charges.

As a founder of the Roslindale Community Center Council I can no longer support you or the officers as any legitimate authority in this community.

[Tags]Boston, Roslindale, Walter Michalik[/Tags]

Via Steve — this is nearly perfect. It is immensely satisfying to see a Democratic presidential candidate  gracefully obliterate frivolous attacks rather than cower under them.

[Tags]Politics, Obama, Energy[/Tags]

Unlike Steve (who walked out before the end!), I loved I’m Not There. It worked so well for me precisely because it was only half-coherent. Like Dylan’s own music, you’re never really sure if it’s deeper than you can possibly grasp, just a cosmic joke, or maybe both. Cate Blanchett nearly steals the show as the only fully Dylan-esque Dylan, but 13-year-old Marcus Carl Franklin is a close runner up (below with Richie Havens):

[Tags]Dylan, I’m Not There, Music, Film[/Tags]

I’ve used the TLA EOM occasionally, but never considered the full scope of its utility. Lifehacker just made me a full convert:

EOM means much more than End of Message. It means “good use of time.” It means “concise.” It means “clarity.” But GUOTCC doesn’t have the same ring as EOM, so let’s stick with it. Here are eight great reasons for you to adopt EOM while crafting your email messages.

(1) EOM saves your recipient’s time.—Don’t you value your time? Isn’t it nice when others value your time too? By keeping your subject line short and using EOM you are showing the people you send to you value their time. They’ll thank you for it (when they know what it means).

…

(8) EOM guarantees 100% readership—We’ve all had the frustrating experience of waiting on someone to read our important email and respond. Sometimes we wait a long time and follow up to find out they haven’t even read the message at all. Perhaps the most powerful advantage of EOM is 100% readership. Why? Because your entire message is in the subject line. Your message becomes impossible to ignore because it comes in front and center—no need to double click.

In a job where I receive between 300-1000 emails on most weekdays, every little bit helps.  The main drawback of excessive EOM’ing may be that it breaks threading for some mail readers, and may be incompatible with other email conventions.

[Tags]Email, EOM, Lifehacker, Productivity[/Tags]

There is a widespread problem with the Linux driver for the Realtek 8168/8169 cards where the modules load properly and the card is visible but no link is detected. E.g.:

Jun 21 18:28:41 localhost kernel: r8169: eth0: link down
Jun 21 18:28:41 localhost kernel: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready

There are lots of details and suggested solutions from the Ubuntu people. None of the suggestions worked for me, however. Several of them suggest configuring the card under Windows, but the box containing this device is a single-boot linux fileserver. The “wake-on-LAN” functionality seems to be implicated, but not in a way I can see how to fix.

After much head-banging (in the bad sense), I found a simple solution:

(1) Install ethtool
(2) Modify /etc/network/interfaces as follows (substitute your r8169 interface for ‘eth1’ and other settings accordingly):

iface eth1 inet static
pre-up /usr/sbin/ethtool -s eth1 autoneg off
address 192.168.98.1
netmask 255.255.255.0

This did the trick for me where no other solution would work. Of course, link autodetection no longer occurs, but that’s a small price to pay for connectivity.

This is a Debian etch installation using a slightly more recent kernel (2.6.25-2-686).

As an interesting side note, on this new box, the interface appears as eth0 in the kernel logs, but is actually mapped as eth1. Similarly, a second Ethernet interface appears in the log as a different device number than that by which it is referenced. Any ideas why?

Update 6/22/08: Still not getting 1000BaseT (Gigabit), however. If I force 1000BaseT with ethtool -s eth1 speed 1000, the link goes down again (even with autoneg off). The same card in another box, however, detects the link and goes to 1000BaseT automatically. So I’m stuck at 100BaseT.

Update 6/24/08: Linux 2.6.26-rc5 fixes the problem 100% for me.

[Tags]realtek, r8169, linux, drivers, hacking[/Tags]

I’ve been on the road a lot lately with no time to blog (or sleep).  Following are a couple items to keep this space from going completely dead.

A wild turkey stopped by our backyard (in Boston):

I called city animal control, and they said these guys are everywhere. Apparently there is no more wild left for the wildlife.

In other news, Gears is finally available for Firefox 3! For me, at least, this is a big deal, since I frequently depend on offline mode for Google Reader and have otherwise fully migrated to FF 3 for the speed benefits. Since RC2, it’s mostly stopped crashing as well.

[Tags]Wild Turkey, Wildlife, Gears, Boston, Firefox[/Tags]