My Tropical Odyssey

Well, this is it, ladies and gentlemen.

For the next four weeks (from May 23-June 20) I'll be in Costa Rica doing field work with the professor I had as a supervisor for my ZOO 498 research project, Dan Brooks. We'll be doing parasite work involving genetic barcoding, a new (and very controversial) approach to systematics and taxonomy. There are species of parasites (nematode worms, I assume) there who live in their larval stage within snails, and from there spread to other host organisms (mainly birds, but also lizards, frogs, etc.) in their adult phase. The larvae are almost impossible to classify through traditional methods (i.e. morphology), so the idea is that they could be classified using genetic barcoding techniques. Of course someone has to get the larvae, and that's where I come in.

We'll be going to a biological reserve (not unlike Jokers' Hill) near Liberia, one of the major cities (the capital?). Dan says it's pretty tame; we'll have running water, electricity, a phone line, and laundry will be done in Liberia, where there are laundromats. Sadly, there will be no Internet, with the exception of momentary stops at Internet Cafe's in Liberia while we'll be in town for laundry. Suffice to say, I won't be around (heh, not that anyone would notice, of course!), and I fully expect my email inbox crammed full of spam ^H^H^H^H friend's telling me how much they miss me when I get back.

I'm currently collecting addresses for postcards from people (you know who you are), so expect to get some in the future! I'll be sure to try to get some souvenirs for people too, if time permits.

Well...see you in four weeks!

It starts with "i" and ends in "Pod"

So I did it. I went out and got yet another 512 MB iPod shuffle to replace the one I had that became my oh-so-wonderful mother's Mother's Day/(Belated) Birthday Gift. I'm aiming to go to the Yorkdale Apple Store grand opening at 9:30 am on the 21st too...I'll see if I can drag mom along from work, if she's not going to be in a fit of sleep induced rancor.

I had this great big, pompous review of the shuffle posted to SNOG!, which was summarily turned into a flame war thanks to Jordie, who decided to tell us (effectively, in so many words) that we were all brand-whores/trend-sheep for liking the iPod. I won't force you to endure the rabid fanboyism of my first review, so here's some general thoughts about the iPod shuffle, for anyone interested...

A) Yes, it doesn't have a screen. But you see, that's sort of part of the point. With a conventional MP3-flash based player, you'd load it up with all of your albums and use the screen to select between tracks. With the shuffle, you add only the songs you like...or at least, only the songs that you really enjoy listening to the most. Of course it's hard to navigate between songs, and that's where the randomness of the shuffle comes into play. Think of it as a radio station that you get to control, one where they play only the songs you like, with none of the advertisements. Want something fresh? Plug it into your Mac or PC, delete and toss more tracks onto it (a simple drag-and-drop deal), or...if you're feeling daring just hit "Autofill" in iTunes. If you've clicked on "Choose higher rated songs more often", you'll get a wider mix of songs you enjoy using.

B) Yes, it doesn't have an FM-radio/stopwatch/voice recorder, etc. But really, how often do you use or need those features? And do they really add to the value of the shuffle as a digital music player? If you really want an FM-radio, then why are you buying an MP3-player in the first place?

C) Naturally, like most (all?) Apple products, the shuffle is not for everyone. If you'd like a digital music player that's a little different from the ordinary, or like me, just need a cheap economical way to carrying your favourite songs or albums along, then the shuffle is a great choice. At $129 CDN for the 512 MB model, it's a very good value compared to similar offerings from other companies like iRiver, Creative, or Samsung. But -- and it's a big but -- if you want or need a music player which works and feels just like your old Sony Discman/CD Walkman clunker (i.e a "conventional" MP3-player with a screen, etc.), then the shuffle wouldn't be a good idea.

And this brings me to the point about trend-sheep-ism; really, I like the iPod because it effectively fits what I want out of a digital music player, no more, no less. I'll admit that the fact that it's made by Apple was a big part of the decision, but that's because I've had a lot of experience with Apple's products, the majority of them positive. "Being Trendy" had nothing to do with it whatsoever. I can think of other, very well designed products who have gathered very devoted followings; cars, basic appliances, personal and home electronics...basically every category of consumer product has something -- a brand or a product because it does the seemingly novel duty of doing what it's customers want it to do, more or less. Since when is that a crime?

Somebody pinch me...

2004 Fall - Bachelor's Degree Program - Victoria College

Sessional GPA 3.30 Cumulative GPA 2.95
Crs Code Title Wgt Mrk Grd CrsAvg
BIO469H1 Limnology 0.50 77 B+ *
BIO494Y1 Seminar in Evol Bio 1.00 IPR
BOT251Y1 Bio Plants Micro-Organms 1.00 IPR
ZOO354Y1 History of Biology 1.00 IPR
ZOO498Y1 Research Project 1.00 IPR
Credits Earned: 0.50

2005 Winter - Bachelor's Degree Program - Victoria College

Sessional GPA 3.71 Annual GPA 3.67 Cumulative GPA 3.11
Crs Code Title Wgt Mrk Grd CrsAvg
BIO494Y1 Seminar in Evol Bio 1.00 92 A+ *
BOT251Y1 Bio Plants Micro-Organms 1.00 74 B C+
ZOO354Y1 History of Biology 1.00 84 A- B-
ZOO462H1 Adv Phylogenetics 0.50 87 A *
ZOO498Y1 Research Project 1.00 90 A+ A-
Credits Earned: 4.50

You know how I am when it comes to bragging, but I'm sure that given the neurotic state I've been in with regards to marks for the past three months (to say nothing of the last nine years of my life), I think you can give me some allowance on that...

Like I said yesterday...you see? There is a God.

See? There is a God...

Mission Accomplished

They didn’t have much to go on, only some disturbing photos and a resort location. But Toronto Police have confirmed authorities have found a girl who was being abused for years, and the man they believe was behind the terrible crime.

The case began several months ago, when local cops came across the disgusting images on the Internet. It quickly became clear the abuse had been going on for years and investigators watched as the tortured child grew up before their eyes in photo after photo.

After efforts to track her down failed, the Sex Crimes Unit took the unprecedented step of air brushing her out of the photos and releasing them to the public, hoping someone could pinpoint where the crimes took place.

And someone did, with several tipsters confirming they were from a hotel in Walt Disney World. That led Florida police and local authorities to another photograph, this time of what they called a key witness.

And that’s when cops finally received the tip they’d been waiting for.

Details are still scarce, but police here reveal the girl has been rescued and that the man they believe was behind the terrible crime is in custody.

The F.B.I. and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security were both involved in bringing the case to a close.

Police are being tight-lipped about who she was and where she was, but they do admit she was living in a residence somewhere in New York State.

They’d theorized her attacker was someone close to her, but there’s no word on whether they were right.

The case sparked controversy over whether photos of the victim and the witness should be released, possibly compromising their privacy. But authorities believed the benefits outweighed the risks and on Friday, despite all the odds, they revealed the case had finally come to a close.

May 13, 2005

And the process involved what some people on Slashdot have considered to be the World's Worst Job: editing out the girl from the original pornographic pictures. I won't go into what I feel about this...I don't even want to think about it, and it's pretty obvious how I feel about the outcome of this case and the circumstances in which this girl lived most of her life.

I don't mean to at all subtract from the significance of the incredible effort that went into this...but seeing as how the outcome of this case could have been much, much worse (an earlier story looked at how the mother of Holly Jones was dealing with Mother's Day), I think that it's no less than a miracle that she was found safe, and the man (supposedly her foster father) caught.

She's now in her teens now, according to the TV report I just saw. I can't help but feel that while her terrible ordeal may be over, her true suffering...won't.

Back-Spin

The big news in the popular scientific press is the end of the Kansas "Kangaroo Kourt", centered around the big debate about whether "Intelligent Design" Creationism should be inserted into the Dover high school curricula. The Panda's Thumb has been covering the Evolution side of the debate pretty well, and of course The Discovery Institute and other ID figures like Dembski have weighed in as well.

Really, Steve Case's letter to the Wichita Eagle pretty much sums it up for me. But I'll distill it and give it my own "spin": Creationists and Intelligent Design Advocates in the popular press are deceitful, cowardly liars who have hijacked Christianity to serve their own wicked agenda. Abrams' original letter, to which Case's letter was a reply, would have you think that he is the victim, and only serving the cause of good science...but Case has blatantly caught him in his own web of lies and rhetoric. The only "proof" that the Intelligent Design advocates have given in evidence of their claim that biology is rife with tension and division over the validity of evolutionary biology have been dishonestly used quotes, distorted research from evolutionary biologists, and worst of all, outright lies that are perpetuated over and over and over again despite their repeated, explicit refutation. These people have been told over, and over and over again that the discussion and debate over evolutionary biology is not over the existence of evolution, or even Darwinian natural selection, but on the mechanism - the how of evolution. That these people have ignored this is a clear sign to me that they are either unbelievably ignorant and stupid, or simply without any sense of academic or moral integrity.

What makes me even more angry is not just that these people are outright liars -- but that they either have themselves, or a hardened core of followers who are more than willing to justify this through outright obfuscation, blissful ignorance, or just an even more tangled web of lies.

It simply astounds me that these people can give any justification to their acts...that they deny the overtly religious motivation for their actions yet shield them under a dense fog of confusing jargon. Christianity is not about lying to get ahead. It is about honesty and freedom, yet these people are more than willing to put a yoke of intellectual slavery over the necks of all of the school children of Kansas. This is simply pathetic and shameful, and I have to say to their supporters, Shame on You. Shame on you for demeaning and insulting a proud religious tradition. Shame on you for demeaning and insulting the hard work of scientists and researchers around the world, for decades...and lastly, shame on you for your "justified" hypocrisy.

For Apple Apologetics (And Sour Grapes), Apply Within

The latest storm in the Apple world is the somewhat overplayed conflict that Apple has had with the KHTML developers over Safari, the high-profile web browser project developed by Apple that was, ostensibly, supposed to be the showcase of how Apple liked to play nice with the OSS (open source software) community. Trouble is, the KHTML people are annoyed at the fact that changes posted by David Hyatt (the lead developer of Safari) are so hard to integrate back into Konqueror, the open-source KDE-based counterpart of Safari that they just don't bother trying. Now, Firefox lead developer Ben Goodger's weighed in with...well, a justification of what Apple's doing - something which has raised the ire of people who, well, don't seem to really understand what either side is saying.

Hyatt himself pretty much lays it all out: the changes that he submitted to the KDE/KHTML developers were changes made to WebCore, not KHTML; KHTML is the rendering engine behind Konqueror, and WebCore, the rendering engine behind Safari, is based off of it: Webcore != KHTML. The Safari team, and Apple, have effectively forked the KHTML code, in the same way that Firefox, has, effectively, been a fork of the browser code of Mozilla. Just like how Mozilla and Firefox are two totally different web browser projects that have originated from a common ancestor (heh), Safari and Konqueror have the same relationship. And like Mozilla and Firefox, they're two totally different projects.

The trouble here is that people seem to think that Safari is just an Apple-branded version of Konqueror, when the reality really couldn't be farther from the truth. That's essentially what Hyatt is saying, but the media has of course blown this totally out of proportion, and has failed to see what the fact of the matter truly is.

Goodger's comments do raise a good point; Apple's "vision", for better or for worse, is one that is user-centric, in stark comparison to OSS projects like Konqueror, which arguably are more developer-centric. I don't buy into the interpretation of one comment from a KHTML developer which was construed to say "We don't care about users, only developers", but its just that like most OSS projects, the fact of the matter is that developers are front and centre, not users.

So what ultimately is my take on this, as a user? People point to the relationship between Apple and the GCC OSS community as an example of How Things Ought to be, and I'd generally agree. I don't know as much as I should, but I suspect that Hyatt's working method differs enough from the KDE developers that for either one to shift their method of working on the code to the other's methods would just be too much to ask. Maybe there's more, but beyond that I really can't say.

I think that the real fault lies with the media and the pundits who've really lost sight of what's really going on here. As always they've turned a molehill into a mountain, and as a result, Apple's relationships with its developers has the potential to suffer some degree of appreciable damage. And that's really too bad.

Hey Karen...

As requested, I've unlocked comments so anyone can post...which of course leaves me vulnerable to some extent (but that shouldn't be an issue unless the people who I don't want here actually come here -- mum's the word, yes?)...anyway I'm really curious to see what sort of comments you have on some of my posts...

Spring is in the air...

I spent most of the day out with mom, showing her art stores that I thought she might have liked to see for pictures for her room, the dining room, and the kitchen. While I was out with Jennie once I saw a nice picture of a bowl of strawberries for only $10 (down from $35), and she liked it.

It was...hard, having to revisit some of the sites where Jennie and I went and hung out in. Like the last time and the first time she visited, there was a sense of emptiness there, a vibrant colour which was once there but now faded away. I have to now train myself to get out of the eager routine I fell in, calling up Jennie's room at the Delta Chelsea, and hearing Bonnie's bright and cheery voice, hurrying through the College Park shopping concourse, seeing my smiling Jennie coming up to hug me in the lobby.

I'm going to see her again -- I know I will, and once again we've gone back to our old routine on AIM. It'll take me a while to adjust, and it's gotten better with time, too. Still, I just can't help but feel this overwhelming sense of realizing that something wonderful and magical was once with me, and now just isn't there anymore.

The whole week was just a whirlwind for me. Between the emotional stress of having to try to keep mom happy, having to help Jordan take care of his maternal grandfather, and dealing with Bonnie's reaction to all of that plus being dropped back into Toronto, it was a miracle that I could still keep myself together to actually spend time with Jennie -- and even then I realized that a lot of important things fell through the cracks...like helping Katherine with Neena's move back to her apartment in Etobicoke.

(If you're reading this, Katherine...my God, I'm sorry. I tried to get back to you, but I just was either too exhausted or just simply had no time...but I did try to call you up last night and you weren't there...could we get together sometime soon?)

It's never easy, isn't it? But as Jennie told me, life would be pretty dull if it were, wouldn't it?