Not my practice blog, by Scott Knaster

My fault?

When you live in California, you get used to earthquakes, or at least learn to hone your denial skills. When a quake happens, you often hear that the quake was located "on a previously unknown fault", at which point you chuckle grimly and crank up the denial just a bit more.

Despite 21 years of living in California, I still found this article kind of shocking:

A new study of the rock below west Santa Clara Valley has revealed a possible active fault zone between Campbell and San Jose, scientists reported Wednesday.

They have not mapped the full extent of the fault zone and do not know if it is dangerous. All they have is a single slice through the fault -- a cross section -- that does not go all the way down to the depths where earthquakes originate.

However, this area has been peppered with small, mostly imperceptible earthquakes, indicating that the fault is active, said geophysicist Rufus Catchings of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, who led the study.

"It's relatively small seismicity. It's nothing huge," he said. "But we don't know what it's capable of, because we don't know the extent of these things."

The article was printed with a map (which is not available online) showing the new fault running right through my neighborhood. Whee.

A new Mac for $500?

Is Apple really going to introduce a Mac for $499? I'm not sure about Think Secret's track record, but there is a lot of realistic detail in this one, including the inscrutable Apple codename, Q88.

The Internet vs. a tree

Years ago, when I wanted broadband at home, I had only one option: Sprint Fixed Wireless. This wacky system features a microwave transceiver on my roof pointed at a tower on a hill 15 miles away. As I've written before, it's very reliable and works well. Now that DSL and cable modem have at last come to my backwater little neighborhood (Silicon Valley), I have other choices, but I'd prefer not to switch.

Recently I started having unusual problems with my connection. The modem would lose its "lock" light, and the tech support folks couldn't do anything to fix it -- and then it would come back by itself an hour later. So for the first time in 4 years, Sprint had to send a service tech to my house to check things out. He was great, even putting on little plastic booties before tromping through my house. After checking the antenna, he told me the bad news: a tree 1/4 of a mile away was growing into my line of sight to the tower, and this technology needs line of sight. To fix the problem, he offered to put the antenna on a pole that would extend 10 feet over my roof. But the pole would have to be placed on the neighbor's property to see around the offending tree.

Anybody have a chainsaw?

53a50n'5 Gr33+1ng5

if (youDoChristmas)
    merryChristmas
  else
    happyHolidays;

also = [self happyBirthday: wish
         date: 26
        month: December];

Avoiding "Don't stop, stupid!"

If you're driving from Silicon Valley to I-5 for Christmas, you might want to avoid the "Don't stop, stupid!" intersection. Here is an update on ways around the problem.

Safe travels!

The Graphing Calculator Story

In case you haven't already done so, read Ron Avitzur's amazing Graphing Calculator Story. And if you think it can't possibly be true, then you've never worked at Apple.

Lost language regained

The Chochenyo language was thought to be lost when its last speaker died in 1930. But now linguists and Ohlone-Muwekma tribe members are working to restore it to life.

Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays

This year there's been a lot of noise and discussion about saying Happy Holidays, or perhaps Merry Christmas. It seems to me there's more "Happy Holidays" and less "Merry Christmas" than ever in ads and other commercial communications. As someone who doesn't celebrate Christmas, I like how that feels -- it seems friendlier and more thoughtful to me. Others disagree. And sometimes it's silly: a picture of a Christmas tree should not be accompanied by "Happy Holidays": it's a Christmas tree.

Part of the passion and frustration about this issue is because it seems like it should be so simple -- it's just a greeting! But it's truly complicated. That's the price for a pluralistic society like ours. Thinking about stuff like this is hard and tricky, but it's the right thing to do.

Why is it so complicated? One reason is that Christmas has two parts, the secular and the religious. The secular observation is inescapable. Businesses close, homes are decorated, Christmas music is everywhere. This part of Christmas is inclusive -- you're welcome to enjoy it, no matter what your religion. The religious part is optional. And because this is such an important religious holiday, I understand how Christians can be frustrated and offended by its secularization and commercialization.

Another part of the problem is that there's no direct analog to Christmas for non-Christians, just seasonal approximations. Trying to make Christmas = Hanukkah is a good way to bug a lot of people.

When I was younger, I got annoyed when somebody wished me "Merry Christmas". It seemed thoughtless, and I usually just grumbled back at them. Now that I'm all grown up, when I hear "Merry Christmas" (or any other holiday greeting) I appreciate the spirit in which it's said: I simply assume somebody is giving me a joyous greeting. I don't feel like they're flaunting their religion, evangelizing, or proselytizing. They're giving me something nice, and I give them back in kind.

On the other hand, those who make commercials with obnoxious lyrics to Christmas songs must be punished severely.

Return of "Return of the King"

Barbara and I spent parts of the past three nights consuming the just-released Return of the King Extended Edition DVD set. We really loved seeing the movie again, and many of the new and extended scenes are fun. I was a little disappointed in the Mouth of Sauron (depicted here). He was too campy to me, not creepy or terrifying as he should have been. Maybe it was the way he tilted his head when he hissed and sneered, but it didn't work for me. I thought it drifted off a little too far into Monty Python territory -- I expected Mouth to snarl "Go away, silly Gondor knnnnnnnniggts!" at any time.

If you watch all the way to the end of the credits, you see that once again Peter Jackson has appended the complete, LONG list of charter members of the Lord of the Rings fan club. Cool.

The DVD extras we've watched so far are pretty cool. One features a discussion about the climax of the story in which ***SPOILER!*** Gollum and the ring fall into the fires of Mount Doom. In the book, Gollum is dancing around gleefully after regaining the ring, when he gets too close to the edge and falls off. For the movie, Peter Jackson and crew wanted Frodo to be less passive in the ring's demise, so they first filmed him charging into Gollum and driving him off the cliff. Then, they decided that looked like an attack on Gollum, which violated Tolkien's principle, expressed throughout the book, that Frodo's compassion toward Gollum eventually helped destroy the ring. So they changed it again, this time showing Frodo struggling to regain the ring, when Gollum falls to his (Mount) Doom. So the choices basically come down to passive Frodo vs. murderous Frodo vs. ring-crazed Frodo. I think they made the right decision. In the book, I loved the image of Gollum dancing around maniacally, then falling off the edge. But for the movie, that might look too much like a cartoon "oops", and besides, after Frodo's "The ring is mine" transformation, it makes sense that he would fight for it. So, well done, guys.

Another documentary extra reminds us that Tolkien was concerned that nobody would ever read his stories. This was a valid fear, as the book he worked on for much of his life wasn't published until he was 62 years old. That's pretty inspiring.

The Dead Hensons

The Dead Hensons were on KFOG yesterday morning. They play works from the shows of the late, great Jim Henson and crew: Sesame Street and The Muppet Show & movies. Get some free MP3s here, including a stirring rendition of Rainbow Connection.