If one always argues as the Devil’s Advocate does one eventually come around to the Devil’s side?

It’s interesting to hold an opposite position from nearly everyone you know. Especially about something politically divisive. Everyone assumes you think like they do, lots of offensive stuff gets emailed and linked, people nudge you about things and expect something other than a blank stare. I’m good at the blank stare now. I’m also good at keeping my mouth shut and swallowing anger. People, even good smart people, just aren’t as accepting of differences as they think they are, and it’s just not worth the risk of finding out who can deal with it and who can’t. Yes, this is can be depressing at times.

Sort of related side note:

Last week a friend of a friend (of a friend…) was emailing around this short New Yorker column:

Day No. 1
And the Lord God said, “Let there be light,” and lo, there was light. But then the Lord God said, “Wait, what if I make it a sort of rosy, sunset-at-the-beach, filtered half-light, so that everything else I design will look younger?”
“Im loving that,” said Buddha. “It’s new.”
“You should design a restaurant,” added Allah.

What’s wrong with this picture? The Lord God and Allah are the same entity. How could the New Yorker let that slip? Are they honestly that ill-informed? Or was it perhaps a last minute “diversity-correction”, grepped in to appease the new gods of political correctness. Whatever it was, it completely undermined the whole piece. Successful humor is just not based on alternate universes. The punch-line to a joke can’t come from somewhere outside the setup. “Why did the chicken cross the road? Because the sky was green and there was no gravity.” The Lord God can’t just talk with an accent and then become Allah. The Lord God is Allah, and vice versa.

I had written a few related paragraphs about my thoughts on religion, evolution, intelligent design and a few other topics. Then I deleted them. If you really want to know what I think about any of those, buy me a beer. Or three, I’m difficult to pigeonhole and chatty when I drink.

ps. I will not acknowledge any guesses as right or wrong so please don’t bother.

• AppleScript System Events Bug A serious but intermittent bug in 10.4’s System Events background application
  tags: applescript macosx scripting +

Despite the number of people successfully using my iPhoto AppleScripts, I’ve had a troubling number of people report problems as well. These weren’t just little problems, the scripts completely failed to run.

I asked several of these people to run the scripts from Script Editor and send me the error message they got when the scripts failed. All but one of the problems happened during a call to the System Events background application. Most infuriating was the fact that I couldn’t reproduce the problem. Today I managed to recreate what I believe is the problem.

The script below is a test script which pounds on System Events then tries to detect and recover from System Events crashes.

UIcheck() System Events Test Script (UIcheck.zip, 4k)

Please download the script and post your results in the comments. I’m seeing a consistent 3-9% failure rate for System Events on my PowerBook.

This is public domain, use at your own risk, etc. Please post improvements if you have them.

Update: Please post your OS version alongside any results.

Update 2: More on the System Events AppleScript bugginess Including a new test script.

• Navy Research Laboratory Monterey Weather Satellite Products Satellite weather data, fast and raw
  tags: hurricane navy rita weather +

• “Don’t Get Stuck On Stupid” 1.6mb MP3
  tags: NewOrleans honore katrina media mp3 +

• Typetester Very well done tool for comparing various CSS text setting
  tags: css tools typography webdesign +

On each anniversary I walk by Engine 28 and Ladder 11’s stationhouse . In 2001 they were my local FDNY company who would serenade the East Village with “Lowrider” blaring from the hook-and-ladder’s PA. They used to buy groceries at my supermarket.

Today I took Lila with me. We talked a lot, explaining how today was a sad anniversary instead of a happy one. She knows a little, as she puts it, “a building fell down and lots of firemen got hurt.”

Each year after their memorial mass a large group of firemen and their families gather near the station. Lila was asking why they were “all dressed up” in their formal uniforms. Soon enough the questions are going to get more difficult to answer. I told her that today was a special day for thanking firemen. I also thank the police, military, and Con-Ed who were busy restoring power the next day, if not sooner. And especially that one MTA bus driver who was driving his M14 bus up Avenue A after the towers fell, with a foot of debris on the bus’s roof.

This year I finally shook hands with and thanked one of the firemen in person, something I’ve been wanting to do for four years but never found the courage.

My voice broke. We both stood there quietly for a few seconds, looking down. I felt very small.