Lackhead.org

I was recently sent a reference to an essay, written in 1991 by Richard P. Gabriel about the development of the Common Lisp standard. The article is called Lisp: Good News, Bad News, and How to Win Big, and while it is interesting in its own right (to those of us interested in the Lisp and Scheme programming languages), what truly stands out about this article is the section called “Worse Is Better”. Although he is talking about Lisp versus C, etc, what he touches upon I believe pervades all of academia, especially engineering. Engineering, and those with engineering brains, suffer from this dichotomy because they live in a world that splits the difference between theory and implementation. These two paradigms have similar goals but wind up working in opposition more often than not. Why? Well, that is the mystery that is probed in this article.
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From Slate, an article about a sexual assault case where the words rape, assault, victim, and even “sexual assault kit” have been banned from being used in front of the jury.

Also, Darth Cheney asserts that he isn’t part of the executive branch in order to exempt himself from having to provide records. His standoff with the National Archives goes back to at least April. Oh, and here’s a picture of a document shredding service truck pulling up to Cheney’s office in October. Don’t get me started on email retention policies.

What happened to reality?

-c

Today’s random tangent: aseptic packaging. Aseptic packaging are those boxes that you buy liquid foods in, such as juices, soy milk, tasty chai goodness, soups, etc. Aseptic packaging is actually an entire process, where the food is flash pasteurized and packaged in an aseptic or sterile environment. This is opposed to traditional canning practices, where food is heated in the final container, or heated and then canned so that the heated food sterilizes the container during processing. While the infrastructure for aseptic packaging is more expensive, it does have many benefits:

1. Delicate foods that would be damaged by retort or hot-fill canning canning can be pasteurized more delicately and shipped in unrefrigerated conditions
2. In addition, this change in pasteurization also helps preserve nutrients and flavor of the product
3. Shipping costs are lowered, as the containers (boxes) can be shipped to the processing plant in a flattened state, as opposed to cans; also there is no need to ship products in a refrigerated state
4. Flash pasteurization is more energy and time efficient compared to other methodologies

So why all this interest? Well, it all stemmed from wondering if these packages are recyclable (factoid of the moment: most lids/tops of plastic containers are different types of plastic than the containers themselves, and may or may not be recyclable). I called Salt Lake City’s Recycling Program, and while they could read from their brochure that juice boxes were OK to put out on the curb with your other recyclables, they had no idea what aseptic packaging was or that they can be hard to recycle (those boxes are a complex layering of plastic, paper and aluminum). They directed me to Allied Waste Management, which is the company who actually picks up your recycling for the city. They had no idea how to answer my question, and redirected me to Rocky Mountain Recycling, which is the company that actually recycles the material.

Or sort of. After talking to a few people at Rocky Mountain, I finally got in touch with J.R. there who told me all about their recycling process. It turns out that they only recycle solid plastics, glass, tin and aluminum. Once they pull all the stuff they directly recycle out of the mix, they sort out all obvious trash which heads to a landfill, and everything else, including aseptic boxes, are compressed and sold on the open market to other recyclers who deal in such mixed leftovers.

So, does that box that once contained a tasty chai concentrate get recycled when I put it in my curbside container? Likely. It might get sent all over the country first, but it probably will wind up getting recycled at some point (J.R. said that the actual company that they wind up selling to can change frequently). So, feel free to toss aseptic packaging in your blue bin. Also, keep in mind that recycling is only one part in the “greenness” of a packaging product; due to the energy savings in processing and shipping mentioned above, aseptic packaging might be more environmentally friendly than your traditional can even if the boxes wind up in a landfill.

-c

ps- Oh, and speaking of packaging, happy belated Earth Day!

There is a melange of thoughts and feelings swirling in my head today, with an overtone of coherent post somewhere mixed in, but I’m not positive if I’ll be able to weave those threads together to form something tangible. Well, let’s see what homey can do.

I’ve been resisting reading, much less writing, anything concerning the recent shootings at VTech. I mean, really, what is there to say? And besides, it seems as if everybody in America is trying to say everything they possibly can about it, all at once, so why add to the glut filling the world’s consciousness? (hopefully people won’t miss some other big headlines, like the Supreme Court’s abortion ban, Kucinich announcing plans to file impeachment procedures against Dick Cheney, the massive bombing in Baghdad….and that’s just this morning). But for some reason I drifted into a post over at The Huffington Post that seems to articulate a few of those nascent thoughts I have churning around. Amanda Marcotte also touches on some, flirting with a feminist slant on this issue, as well as documenting some of the more egregious wingnut reactions to this tragedy. And don’t get me started on gun control (and don’t think that just because you remember Kenneth Hammond or Mohammed Taheri-azar means that this is an easy issue).

But what I was drawn to in Bob Cesca’s post at Huffington was that he spoke about the incident within the current that our American society seems to be drifting in these days. Glenn Greenwald too, in his fantastic post this morning about the National All-Schedules Prescription Reporting Act, also keeps an eye on the larger context- the grander passion play that is the fight between liberty and security. A illusory fight that both Benjamin Franklin and Hermann Goering understood well; use some verbal slight of hand to cast liberty and security in opposition, and the public consent toes the line the leaders draw. It might sound like hyperbole, but no, they’re really debating this. Fear and control go hand in hand.

I don’t have any answers or grand pleas to the universe for solutions; I am resigned to the never-ending aspect of this struggle. But at the same time, I feel burdened by each misguided measure our society takes when confronted with fear. I have to take off my shoes and throw away my toothpaste when I get on an airplane, eventually get a national ID card, have my phones and email messages tapped, and in a thousand other ways defer to the authority of a government manipulating our fear for their own profit.

So where does that leave us? Doomed. The world is getting darned to heck, and there’s nothing to do about it but despair and fret and bemoan. Well, at least that’s the end point I used to get to when the news du jour got my knickers in a twist. But I have to say that despite the doom and gloom that can come through the airwaves, I am finding a lot of people out there that are doing something about it. We might not be marching in the streets of Washington like back in the 60’s, but the amount of information, exposure, intellect and insight out there in the blogosphere and elsewhere on the net is really encouraging. With just a little digging, you can find many places where minds are churning and not putting up with the BS of today. To whit, I will leave you with this jewel from over at adequacy.org; it was originally written after 9/11, but the sentiment still applies today. Consider it the olive of good taste floating in the vodka bitterness of modern media:

Many people will use this terrible tragedy as an excuse to put through a political agenda other than my own. This tawdry abuse of human suffering for political gain sickens me to the core of my being. Those people who have different political views from me ought to be ashamed of themselves for thinking of cheap partisan point-scoring at a time like this. In any case, what this tragedy really shows us is that, so far from putting into practice political views other than my own, it is precisely my political agenda which ought to be advanced.

Not only are my political views vindicated by this terrible tragedy, but also the status of my profession. Furthermore, it is only in the context of a national and international tragedy like this that we are reminded of the very special status of my hobby, and its particular claim to legislative protection. My religious and spiritual views also have much to teach us about the appropriate reaction to these truly terrible events.

Countries which I like seem to never suffer such tragedies, while countries which, for one reason or another, I dislike, suffer them all the time. The one common factor which seems to explain this has to do with my political views, and it suggests that my political views should be implemented as a matter of urgency, even though they are, as a matter of fact, not implemented in the countries which I like.

Of course the World Trade Center attacks are a uniquely tragic event, and it is vital that we never lose sight of the human tragedy involved. But we must also not lose sight of the fact that I am right on every significant moral and political issue, and everybody ought to agree with me. Please, I ask you as fellow human beings, vote for the political party which I support, and ask your legislators to support policies endorsed by me, as a matter of urgency.

It would be a fitting memorial.

-c

This comes from the brilliant and eloquent Lewis Lapham from his latest essay in Harper’s Magazine. The essay is called Time Travel and is one part homage to the late historian and social commentator Arthur Schlesinger, and one part wistful acknowledgment of the inefficacy of history trying to teach society a lesson or two. And while I usually savor every delicacy that Mr. Lapham manages to evoke from his keyboard, I found the essay’s final paragraph particularly tasty:

For Cicero as for Arthur Schlesinger, history was not a nursery rhyme. Actions have consequences, one thing leads to the next, and sooner or later somebody’s head shows up on a scaffold or a coin. Children don’t see why they should be bothered to work out either the logic or the mechanics of the problem. Why take the trouble to remember what happened yesterday on channels 5 through 9 when tomorrow is available on channels 12 through 24? The national shortage of adult minds suits the purposes of a government that defines its task as a form of child-rearing and guarantees the profits of the consumer markets selling promises of instant relief from the pain of thought, loneliness, doubt, experience, envy, and old age. A country so favored by fortune is one in which no childhood gets left behind. A self-regarding electorate asks of its rulers what the rich ask of their servants: “Comfort us.” “Tell us what to do.” The wish to be cared for replaces the will to act, and in the event of bankruptcy or rain, travelers stranded on the roads from here to there can send an owl with a message to Harry Potter.

–c