The Cowgirl Coder

I see that Julian Assange has been awarded the Sydney Peace Medal. I’m not sure whether to be concerned or not; this may turn out to be something like awarding Yasser Arafat the Nobel Peace Prize before he started bombing hell out of Israel again. There are still outstanding rape allegations against Assange, and unfortunately, the kind of personality that enjoys breaking some of the rules tends to be someone who enjoys breaking all of the rules.

Does this mean that Assange doesn’t have the right to be considered innocent unless and until he faces an unbiased trial with a jury of his peers? Not remotely. However, I question the judgment of Australian social influence in this case. In a rush to justify Assange’s ideals of openness and accountability, and amid the recent Canadian refusal to extradite a terror suspect to the US based on concerns that we’re violating the Geneva Convention, it’s entirely possible that we’re rushing to justify the man’s actions as well as his ideals.

I have no opinion on Assange’s guilt or innocence. I know that when two different people accuse the same man of the same crime that most civilized nations who empanel grand juries would find cause to at least explore the issue of his guilt or innocence. I’m hoping that in the rush to crucify the US for our actions in Guantanamo Bay that we as a globe do not fail to examine the facts surrounding those allegations. I hold to the same ideals that men throughout history have; Aristotle viewed women as subhuman and slavery as part of the natural order of society. I can find those views and actions repulsive while still cheering for his concepts of social responsibility, republican government, and the search for truth.

Google Docs Gets A Dose Of Gmail Features

At least Google Docs is getting some love and integration with more useful features. Given the inherent nature of shared documents, and now that Google Wave has waved bye-bye, we all need a document collaboration tool that is more efficient than attaching text to emails and losing track of them in the process.

I use Unfuddle to track version control for project notebooks and store repositories for various code trunks, and I cheerfully pay for those features. $9 is ridiculously tiny for the level of configuration and service provided by those kind folks, but on an every day level, we all have a document (a contract, a business letter, a memo, or a price estimate) that needs to be passed back and forth between a small group of people for changes and editing about five or six times until it’s ready. Google Wave was the absolute best way to get that done; without it, the new Google Docs–which I’ve been lovingly poring over–is the new best way to share and edit a document so that people aren’t waiting for their ‘turn’ in the email chain.

It also means that the last person on the email chain doesn’t unwittingly delete or re-add elements to a document which have been carefully excised or composed for reasons they can’t see at the moment. Google Docs isn’t Wave yet, but it’ll do for now.

And in the meantime, I’m planning on creating a VPS and hosting my own Wave server. Cuz it’s fun. And nostalgic.

How does one go about getting a logo made? I’ve gotten a couple of tentative offers, some concepts, and a few ridiculous quotes, but no one seems to do real logo work anymore. I’ve got two people promising drawings, but I haven’t actually seen anything yet.

Does anyone have recommendations for me? I’d really like to see some concept drawings of a nerdy superheroine. Comment on this post if you’re interested; you can use your Facebook login to do so.

Tron: Legacy is supposed to be visually appealing, but staggeringly short on storyline. I’ll go see it in IMAX 3D, but it’s unlikely that I’ll bother with getting it afterwards. Oddly, the movies with the greatest stories are the ones I tend to wait to see.

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Are there any movies you’ve determined you’d like to see in the theater due to a total lack of interest in their story?

I run an LLC, have a Schedule C web design business, am a vendor for Microsoft, and dabble in investment.

Is there any way to tell anymore whether someone’s a Republican or a Democrat by their occupation?

The polar ice caps are melting.

I’m not a global warming theorist, and I have no real opinion on climate change. I mostly don’t hold forth and/or pontificate on things I don’t understand, and as a scientist, I think it’s my obligation to not discuss matters that I haven’t researched.

There are a few pieces of incontrovertible evidence of some form of global climate shift, however. Whether or not there is any effect on that shift caused by humanity is a subject for more dogmatic minds than my own, but I do see the differences in the ice caps shown in these pictures.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10660130

I’m not sure what to make of those pictures, but I’m uncomfortable with the notion that when I climb Mt. Everest in about five years (when I’ll have trained to do so and have awesome pink climbing gear) that the accomplishment will matter somewhat less than Hillary and Norgay would have hoped.

If it’s a simple stroll to a lovely grassy peak, what’s the point?