Geek amusements

For all the sysadmins out there. I think cerebrate, especially, will enjoy this, if he hasn't seen it already.

And a snippet from a staff meeting yesterday:

"...so he measures the surface with MRI, but that gives him a very noisy dataset. So he uses something called tensor voting to clean up the data."

"What's that?"

"Basically, the data points 'vote' to decide which points have the most noise in them, and those are eliminated."

"So, it's like reality TV?"

"Yes, only the blandest points survive."

"But later they bring back some of the old points, when the ratings start to fall."

Well, it amused *me* :-)

Politics: gay marriage

In a 50-48 vote, the US Senate has blocked attempts to bring Bush's ban-gay-marriage constitutional amendment to a vote before November. As Sen. Christopher Dodd put it: "The issue is not ripe. It is not needed. It's a waste of our time. We should be dealing with other issues."

Meanwhile, Orrin Hatch doesn't get it: "Nobody wants to discriminate against gays .... Gays have a right to live the way they want. ['Nobody'? He obviously hasn't been talking to Rick Santorum lately.] But they should not have the right to change the definition of traditional marriage. That is where we draw the line."

Quick civics lesson for the Senator: Gays DON'T have the right to change the definition of traditional marriage. The power to do that is vested in the States - and while gays can certainly vote for gay-friendly candidates, you still need a big chunk of the straight vote to be elected in a society where straights outnumber gays by around ten to one.*

(And before any whining about 'activist judges' begins: the judges' role here is to interpret & reconcile laws made by state and federal legislature. When legislature creates laws that are ambiguous, or that conflict with other laws, that is when you get judges falling back on their own judgement. In fact, that's what they're for - 's why they're called 'judges'.)

Rick Santorum doesn't get it either: "Isn't that the ultimate homeland security, standing up and defending marriage?"

Why, no, it isn't. The ultimate Fathehomeland security is protecting people from much more tangible and permanent threats - like, oh, 'violent death' - so they're around to make the moral choices that are important.

*Am ignoring 'bi' for simplicity's sake here. You know what I mean.