Upbeat and assorted.

Yes, that’s correct. Apparently there is a BaldGuyz corporation making products just for… well, “bald guys”. As time goes by I am falling more and more into their target audience.

I think these boxes look pretty funny though.

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I wouldn’t actually buy BaldGuyz products, but as an engineer I think I am duty-bound to actually buy these things as soon as they become available around here:

Nexcare 3M Duct Tape Bandages are bandages made to look and feel like real duct tape. The packaging says they provide “heavy-duty protection for minor cuts and scrapes”, and are longer in length to accomodate the meatier fingers of a workin’ man.

(from Strange New Products).

I think their slogan should be “It has a light side, and a dark side, and it holds you together!”, but that might only work with relatively small segment of the population.

This would be a great product for a manly man who fell through a window opening while installing a window, onto a ladder covered with broken glass (from the not-quite-installed window), and then rolled down a brick wall to land in a pile of broken glass.

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Back in April I was already excited about the pending release of Justina Robson‘s new book Living Next Door To The God Of Love. I’m still waiting, with some anticipation, for that one.

I got some additional anticipation today when I learned that Pyr are planning to release Robson’s first two books Silver Screen and Mappa Mundi into the North American market. Since reading–and greatly enjoying–Natural History (on a recommendation from Gwenda) I have had it on my to-do list to track down those earlier books in their original UK editions, but no easy opportunity had presented itself. Now I don’t have to do that. They’re coming to me. Yay.

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I shall have my complete Calvin & Hobbes on Tuesday.

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I must be getting dumber as I age (or possibly as a result of baby induced lack of sleep) because even with the big ol’ clue of the title, it took me a couple of paragraphs to get what Dawkins was doing in this new Prospect piece:

Gerin oil in strong doses can be hallucinogenic. Hardcore mainliners may hear voices in their heads, or see illusions which seem to the sufferers so real that they often succeed in persuading others of their reality. An individual who reports high-grade hallucinogenic experiences may be venerated, and even followed as some kind of leader, by others who regard themselves as less fortunate. Such following-pathology can long postdate the leader’s death, and may expand into bizarre psychedelia such as the cannibalistic fantasy of “drinking the blood and eating the flesh” of the leader.

About as subtle as a frozen salmon headsmack, but I laughed.

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I did a lot of pattern recognition and image processing stuff during my undergrad days, and I’ve continued to be interested in those areas. As a consequence, I for one welcome our newly evolved compression overlords. (That’s a pretty damn impressive showing for a practical application of the whole genetic programming thing. Now, if they can “breed” a better way of finding matches in that kind of database, I’ll be really impressed.)

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And finally, so really good political news.

The government has been ordered to release the really nasty Abu Ghraib pictures that they’ve been sitting on.

A federal judge Thursday ordered the release of dozens more pictures of prisoners being abused at Abu Ghraib, rejecting government arguments that the images would provoke terrorists and incite violence against U.S. troops in Iraq.

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said that terrorists “do not need pretexts for their barbarism” and that suppressing the pictures would amount to submitting to blackmail.

“Our nation does not surrender to blackmail, and fear of blackmail is not a legally sufficient argument to prevent us from performing a statutory command. Indeed, the freedoms that we champion are as important to our success in Iraq and Afghanistan as the guns and missiles with which our troops are armed,” he said.

You go, Alvin!

I’d love for it to be true that these pictures and videos would 1) put Abu Ghraib back into the news cycle at all, and 2) incite even more people to demand an accounting. I am guessing that there must be people who weren’t outraged by the photos we did see, but who will be outraged at seeing/hearing children being sodomized by agents of their government. (I would take Sy Hersh’s word, but if you wouldn’t, you can apparently check the videos.)

You might think it weird to see discussion of torture, and torture of children no less, in an “upbeat” post, but the point isn’t that it happened, it’s that there are still judges who make decisions based on what’s right, and not on partisan political bases. I find that, and the snippets of the judgements in the article, quite uplifting.

The judge said the pictures were important because they were the best evidence of what happened and because they “initiate debate, not only about the improper and unlawful conduct of American soldiers, `rogue’ soldiers, as they have been characterized, but also about other important questions as well.”

You go, Alvin! Again!

There is, of course, a downside.

An appeal of Hellerstein’s ruling is expected, and that could delay release of the pictures for months.

And, of course, should the appeal end up at the Supreme Court, well…