And xray body scanners are standard too, but still creepy. I didn't say "shocking" after all. heh

Quote from: bill on December 16, 2010, 04:52:54 AM
http://panopticlick.eff.org/

I find it creepy that they can list all my installed plugins, to say nothing of my installed system fonts. *grumble*

I was ambidextrous as a young kid. Switched pencil and crayon all willy-nilly either hand. Also randomly wrote letters backwards in the middle of words... hehe

Today I do "finger dexterity" tasks (writing, x-acto knife, sewing, etc.) left-handed. Everything else I classify as wrist or arm dexterity (scissors, throwing a punch, bowling, swinging a bat, shooting), and I do it right-handed (but I aim with my left eye). Bowling is pretty much led by the foot, or you'd club yourself in the leg as you swung the ball, so I'd assume I'm also right-footed. But I can use a mouse equally well with either hand, after a couple minutes' adjustment.

I don't usually wear a baseball cap, but I just put one on quick (adjusted to normal standard of comfort) and looked in the mirror and it was dead straight. Except my whole head is crooked, so I'm not sure if that skews things or not. hehe Back in the late 70s when those awful hard plastic clamp-to-the-head visors were common, I could never wear one because it pushed against the right side of my forehead hard enough to leave a red welt and didn't even touch the left side. I was delivered with forceps. That could fuck up your whole theory there, couldn't it? lol

Also, I was never breast fed, and I have no idea which arm my mother preferred to cradle me with when she bottle fed me.

Don't know about dominant eye... if I close one eye and look at something, then switch, they seem to focus equally fast. Can't comment on accuracy, since that could be skewed by my eyeglass prescription. And I'd think the aiming with the left eye thing is just because a rifle is on the right side of my face, and I'm a bit shy about recoil. With a handgun though, next time I'm target shooting I'll try aiming with the right and see what happens... :-)

But I'll vote with the "handedness is genetic" thing, fwiw.

Well, I'm hoping for the latter. If it ends up being the former, we may well see whatever the hell an "infowar" really is... and it won't be limited to DDOS attacks, I'm afraid.

Quote.. that is the point - so far the 'conventional media' has been based in a physical location, easily subjected to local legislation.

Nono, I see your point there, but the point I was trying to make is that the media already regularly doesn't run important stories because of fear of advertiser backlash, to say nothing of blatantly politically motivated outlets like Fox News over here. So, having a 'media' source like wikileaks potentially having an agenda really isn't a new issue. No matter what media source you're looking at, if you don't know their agenda(s), you can't interpret their output accurately.

Having an extra-legal media source seems like a huge bonus to me, and Assange's political bias seems pretty obviously hacker/anti-establishment, so that's not hard to interpret at all.

Governments have agendas, media outlets have agendas, Assange may well have an agenda... Sure. But at least he adds a new agenda to the mix in that case, because I'm about sick of having only the gov't & established media agendas to choose from.

Wikileaks (which is not only Assange, after all) is at least an interesting addition to the 'fourth estate' role the media is said to occupy... And the media choosing what to print and what not to? That's hardly anything new, is it?

[added] Oh, and apparently OpenLeaks is the next competing site, to be founded by a former WikiLeaks collaborator. So, probably whatever agenda they may or may not have, it'd be similar to Assange's outfit.

 

Quote from: 4Eyes on December 15, 2010, 02:07:05 AM
Stating the obvious, we need an avenue like WikiLeaks as we simply can't trust any of our governments, but we also need to be able to protect some information.

Bit of a catch 22 there, eh? All in all, I'd err on the side of wikileaks rather than the side of trusting government. Governments have a really bad track record with the whole "treating human beings with respect and decency" thing.

BWAHA!: http://www.zazzle.com/i_fucked_julian_assange_tshirt-235719878160915874

Quote from: bill on December 15, 2010, 01:36:01 AM
He was granted bail, but he's still in the slammer until he can raise the funds?

And Sweden has appealed the bail decision... but Michael Moore offered to pay his bail. hehe I don't think he's actually been released yet though.

Quote from: 4Eyes on December 14, 2010, 12:21:28 PM

Quoteshutup 4eyes...

I couldn't find a gap to 'shut up' in

I gotta win some kind of prize for that!

Quote from: dogboy on December 14, 2010, 01:31:17 AM
>appealing at -5ºF
that is maybe the perfect temperature, actually, for running dogs.  Snow is nice at that temperature.

I could totally see that. You don't have to worry about ice shattering under your axes because it's too cold, and you don't have to worry about windburn/frost bite, because you're not moving *that* fast. Running dogs is probably the IDEAL thing to do at -5. :-)

Quotegot to have something to groom the trail, if he is going to sprint:)

Hell, the mush-heads around here groom the neighborhood trails for their distance dogs... If you want to run sprint, there are separate trail systems closer to town all groomed up for them all winter. hehe They don't call this area the dog mushing capital of the world for nothing. ;-)

QuoteBasically 'Alaskan Huskies' are not a registered breed...

I have to keep remembering that when people say Husky... lol  That's why I made the sled-husky vs. show-husky point. Nobody but mushers or people who know mushers think of the crazy race dogs when they say "husky". hehe

(to everyone but dogboy... ;-) Sled dog "huskies" range from scrawny little-bitty 20-30lb. sprint race dogs, to the mid-size distance race dogs dogboy had, to big ~80-100lb. freight pulling dogs, none of which are "Huskies" in the show dog world. And most of them look like misfit mutts even though they're all custom bred to the same degree show breeders customize their dogs. But sled dogs are bred for performance & health rather than looks. It is a separate world where dog breeding is concerned.

QuoteBut only some would be decent house dogs.  Most would just destroy it in a few hours, bouncing off the walls and peeing on whatever they couldn't break.

And that's why, sadly enough, the Fairbanks borough dog shelter is always full of "huskies" they foster out to recreational mushers who send back a description of how they would perform in a team for their adoption "sales pitch". Most of them would never make good house dogs, and most of them stay on the adoption list for as long as the shelter has room. (The local shelter doesn't euthanize until they run out of room and foster homes... there's an "Alaskan husky" there today who's been on the shelter's Petfinder list for a couple of years.)

Anyhoo, I'm not even anything close to a musher. I have a Belgian shepherd and a pitbull... they're like Laurel & Hardy. :-) I just get long winded about the race dogs because I live in the middle of mushing country, and so many people (like the interviewers mention on dogboy's Today Show clip) think mushing is mean to the dogs.... Those crazy dogs are NEVER so happy as they are when they know they're going for a run. :-)

Ehhhh. I also just talk a lot some times. hehehe (shutup 4eyes... ;-)

Also, if you're running a site, it's relatively easy to sync your rss to a Twitter and/or facebook posting script. But facebook is quickly becoming the 1000-armed octopus of the web... Google must feel so "must catch up" mustn't they?

If they haven't easter egged it with 42, I am deeply disappointed with the serious nerds of the world.

Quote from: dogboy on December 13, 2010, 01:16:12 PM
unless you are a sprinter on a closed loop trail

hehehe... Funny you should say that. Lately he keeps talking about getting a sprint team together. Something about being able to sleep in a warm bed after every day of racing or something. Can't say that I blame him there... I can't think of ANY outdoor activity that sounds appealing at -5ºF or colder (been ice climbing and snowmachining at -5, which isn't too bad, really).

I told him he'd better make sure he has a couple of new (gas-powered) sleds before he gets back into dogs though, because they'll be eating all his motorized toy money once he gets a full team together. hehe

And NOW I notice there's a second page of posts... heh

@dogboy: Ha! I remember you talking about trying to figure out how to get yourself and all your dogs/gear/etc. over to Russia. Yep, I definitely thought you were a crazy bastard.

Quote from: Gurtie on December 13, 2010, 02:14:18 PM
ok - so whats the deal with huskys then? are the untrainable, or is it they're best not trained?

I think when people say "huskies" are untrainable, they're talking about making them nice little pet house dogs, which no type of husky is particularly well suited for. They're all high-energy dogs to one degree or another, often strong-willed, and most people don't give them enough exercise to keep them happy, much less are strong-willed enough to override the dog's will. THEN, if you go to an AKC (or UKC, I suppose) conformation dog show, the registered huskies you see there are completely different breeds than the race bred dogs dogboy's talking about... Even so, the show-bred huskies still mostly fall under "high-energy, strong-willed", but since they're bred to live in kennels and prance around show rings they're not usually quite as psycho.

Malamutes and other cargo dogs, on the other hand, are still strong-willed from every one I've seen, but they are to race dogs what draught horses are to thoroughbreds or arabians. The big, heavy, slow animals are always mellower than their high-speed cousins.

Well, before the time he fell off the sled & the leader stopped for him, there was the time he fell off the sled & had to hike after their tracks for a couple hours at -30 (or so he says, might have only been -20), until he found them with the sled hung up on a tree. Not sure if that was a previous leader, or maybe that was when he decided to try and teach him how to stop. lol

I think everyone with a dog team I know up here has at least one "and this one time I lost the team" runaway dog story... None with quite as slick an ending as yours though. I believe you... But video is always a good backup. hehe

I have said to a number of mushers, "All mushers are insane." Not a one has eve tried to deny it. But I think most of them aren't quite crazy enough to tie themselves to their sleds. You must win some kind of prize for that. haha 

Honestly, I'm kinda glad he'd switched to snowmachines by the time I met him... lol So, I've never been dragged anywhere or injured in any way by a dog (or dozen). 

But I gotta say, with all the mushers I know, the idea of a whole team lying down on command is pretty fscking mindboggling. Dan had a leader (obviously after the japanese grandmother incident) who'd actually stop when he yelled at him (causing the rest of the team to kind of end up in a pile behind him), and nobody even believes it when he says that.

Laying down on command...  You really should have gotten video proof of that, you know.  hehehe