More behind the scenes updates, mostly to fix the stuff I didn’t really fix the first time. The site notes archive links now work correctly. This time the Perl script works with the archives instead of breaking all the past links. Also the JavaScript timelapse webcam now goes forward instead of backward.

Bumbling through my referrer logs (with which I am somewhat obsessed and occasionally disappointed), I noticed a link from Jeeyoon’s new wintertale blog. She seems to simultaneously publish her site in Korean (I think) as well. I’m kind of jealous and respect for multi-lingual people, especially when their languages are so totally unrelated (one Euro/Latinate with one Asian or Semitic*). It took me almost an hour to compose a short two paragraph letter in German, and that was with two travel dictionaries and Babelfish.

*I didn’t forget about Swahili, Aboriginal Australian dialects, Nordic, Ket, Russian/Slavic/Asian dialects, Maori, Bemba, Nyanja or any of the thousands of other languages I glossed over.

I’ve been able to get by in foreign places with roman alphabets, but I felt absolutely illiterate in Thailand and Morocco where my inexperienced eye couldn’t make any sense of the words around me.

While gathering the list for the above footnote, I came across a few sobering reports on the extinction of indigenous languages:

• Endangered Native American Languages: What Is to Be Done, and Why?” by James Crawford
• Languages, Disappearing and Dead in Scientific American
• World’s languages disappearing, study finds

By the time any of the Anthrax letters were delivered and revealed to contain a biological weapon, the mailing containers they were processed and delivered with were already back in circulation, on their way to unknown locations. There is no way to track where a container goes after it’s contents have been delivered. Routing directions are attached to mail containers when they are full, these are removed and the containers are refilled and sent elsewhere.

My parents own and operate a mailing service. As part of their jobs, they deliver mailings to the post office using postal service trays and bags. The trays are made of cardboard and corrugated plastic, the bags are canvas. All of these containers are filthy. They never seem to get washed, and stay in service until they wear out.

Mail bags and cardboard trays are porous. These are filthy because paper dust, ink particles and all manor of grease, grime and muck get into the cracks and crevasses and stay there. Cloth and paper are filters and filters clog over time.

Considering how much time has passed and the massive volume of mail processed every day, it’s almost a certainty there will be more Anthrax cases based on redistribution of the existing spores. Our government agencies aren’t doing a whole lot to counter this continuing threat.

The CDC, the same supposedly informed authority who presumed that a common paper envelope was somehow a bio-hazard containment device, has posted these InterimRecommendations for Protecting Workers from Exposure to Bacillus anthracis in Work Sites Where Mail Is Handled or Processed. One passage reinforced my concerns:

Gloves and other personal protective clothing and equipment can be discarded in regular trash once they are removed or if they are visibly torn, unless a suspicious piece of mail is recognized and handled. If a suspicious piece of mail is recognized and handled, the workers protective gear should be handled as potentially contaminated material

The glaring inconsistency here is that a postal worker’s jeans would be considered potentially contaminated, but the unknown canvas mail bag through which the deadly letters were delivered has not been quarantined. In this case especially, any contaminated item has the potential to distribute the contagion just as readily as the original letter. Did no one think of this, or is it just too big a headache? It seems like none of the people commenting on how to make the mail safer have ever visited a working postal facility and have no idea how many potential hazards are built into the system. Yes, high-speed sorting machines create dust, but so does a 30 pount canvas sack of letters when thrown into the back of a truck.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Public Inquiries line: (800) 311-3435

A bunch of site changes today, although almost none of them are visible. I wrote a perl script (still learning) which automates blog-archive links, another script which automatically changes the month for me. These are great so long as I don’t republish my archives, which is a drag that I need to think of a solution for. At any rate it’s nice not to have to worry about changing anything on November 1, or December 1, or January….

I also finally got around to building a timelapse slideshow for recent webcam images. There are a few features I’d still like to add, such as reporting of frame rate and elapsed visible time. The code was quickly modified from something I wrote for a small job earlier this year. Whenever I take a break from Joe’s Filters, I should really write up another JavaScript tutorial about this one.

“In the war of Sept. 11, we’ve been the first victims of our own inability to tell the truth — to ourselves and to others.”

from Thomas Friedman’s editorial, Drilling for Tolerance in today’s New York Times.

Sam from explodingdog has finished his first book. I bought one.

I still want to buy him lunch someday.

At lunch the other day, a woman waiting on take out sushi was wearing a button-down blouse backwards. This is not the sort of thing which happens by accident. While I respect the presumed intention of pushing personal fashion into new places, I came away with one conclusion:

Wearing button down shirts backwards makes you look insane.

Then I remembered when I taught at the Irvine Fine Arts Center’s Arts Camp (1987-1990?) and some of the kids would wear their father’s old button down shirts backwards to keep paint off their clothes. No one thought the kids were crazy, but no one really thinks kids are crazy until they get to high school. I started at Arts Camp as a summer camp counselor, then went on to teach the afternoon open studio. Most of the kids were between the ages of 5 and 10. Teaching there was a great experience for me although it freaks me out to think that most of those “kids” are now in their twenties.

Anyway, that woman with the backwards shirt at the sushi place; still nuts.