So much for the Spinning Dancer

A couple of weeks ago, I ((and most of the blogosphere)) linked to a cool optical illusion of a spinning dancer. At the time, I didn’t realize that people were interpreting this as a “left brain vs. right brain” thing, but apparently they were. Now ScienceLine has a nice piece by Jeremy Hsu called Does the “Right Brain vs. Left Brain” Spinning Dancer Test Work? in which he takes a crack at the pop-science notion of left vs. right brain:

If the test sounds flawed, that’s not just because one shouldn’t use spinning dancers to characterize their brain strengths. Rather, the test is coming up inaccurate because it provides a crude view of the “lateralization of brain function,” or the concept that each side of the human brain specializes in certain mental activities.

Congratulations Boston Red Sox

Boston seems to be dominating in American sports these days… pretty amazing. I’m hoisting a glass of bubbly in the general direction of the Sox. (Denver or Fenway… it’s all east from here.)

Upgrading to Leopard

I picked up a copy of the new Macintosh OS X, Leopard, and installed it last night on my PowerBook. It was rather more troublesome than I expected, and there are definitely a few rough edges. Here are the main points (including a strong warning).

  • Obviously I prepared for this by doing a full backup. I wanted the backup to be bootable, in case my HD became unusable, so I carved out a partition on an external FireWire drive that was exactly the same size as my (80GB) internal disk. I used the Disk Utility “Restore” function to make an exact copy of my internal disk. One consequence of this was that the backup partition got the same name as the internal disk, “Macintosh HD”. This is probably significant – I had two mounted partitions with the same name.
  • I started the upgrade by inserting the DVD and running the installer. What this does is to set the boot drive to the DVD, and then reboot. After rebooting, and accepting the license, the installation program asked me to pick the drive for the installation. It showed the partitions on my FireWire drive, but not my internal HD.
  • What was going on? I checked with Disk Utility (available through the installer), but it couldn’t see any mountable partitions on my HD. I tried to eject the DVD, but I couldn’t. I rebooted off the (bootable) partition on the FireWire drive, but I still couldn’t see/mount my internal HD. I was, however, able to eject the DVD.
  • Finally I decided to zap the PRAM in the PowerBook, by power-cycling and holding down Cmd-Opt-P-R. This allowed me to reboot the PowerBook from the internal HD. Check the disk… OK. Time to start over.
  • I unplugged all external devices from my PowerBook, rebooted, inserted the DVD, ran the installer, allowed it to reboot, accepted the license, and was asked to pick from… no disks at all. My internal HD was still invisible. I ran Disk Utility, checked the logs, brought up a terminal, poked around, closed the terminal… and then, quite suddenly, my “Macintosh HD” appeared in the list. I have no idea what was going on. Was it checking the file system? If so, why was there no feedback… and what hadn’t it done the same with my FireWire drives?
  • Relieved, I allowed the upgrade to run to completion. It took about 90 minutes.

So my advice: unplug all external devices before upgrading, and be prepared to wait for a while without feedback. (Others have reported similar issues on the Apple Support Forums.)
There have been a few other glitches. If you’re upgrading an existing Mail configuration, you should run Mail to allow it to update the mailstore, and then go through every preference option to make sure it’s configured correctly. Quite a few things have changed. I have been using the GPGMail plugin to manage gpg-encrypted email; the plugin no longer works, and Mail disables it.
I’m also having Wifi (Airport) problems. Every so often, I’ll see the icon grey out and I’ll lose the connection to my Airport Express; when I do, the system log contains messages of the form:

Oct 27 13:24:36 silk mDNSResponder[47]: Note: Frequent transitions for interface en1 (192.168.1.2); network traffic reduction measures in effect
Oct 27 13:24:36 silk mDNSResponder[47]: Note: Frequent transitions for interface en1 (FE80:0000:0000:0000:0211:24FF:FEA3:0C42); network traffic reduction measures in effect
Oct 27 13:24:36 silk mDNSResponder[47]: Note: Frequent transitions for interface en1 (192.168.1.2); network traffic reduction measures in effect
Oct 27 13:24:40 silk mDNSResponder[47]: Note: Frequent transitions for interface en1 (192.168.1.2); network traffic reduction measures in effect

This is probably a symptom of an Airport driver which is cycling the interface up and down inappropriately. I’ve also had /usr/lib/airportd crash with a SIGSEGV; I’m going to file the bug with Apple in just a minute. ((There’s an active thread over in the Apple forums on this topic. Looks like a major issue for a lot of people.))
One other oddity: the DVD includes a folder for “Optional Installs”. This includes the developer tools (as usual), but there is also an installer for a bunch of random stuff: obvious things, like various localization files, fonts, and printer drivers, but also various applications, some of which are part of the base OS. There’s no indication anywhere as to what you’re supposed to do with this stuff. ((OK, I take that back. Apparently you can choose not to install certain applications during the main installation, in which case you can add them later on. That makes some sort of sense – but I wouldn’t expect Safari to be on that list!)) I wound up installing everything except the unnecessary localizations and printer drivers.
Overall Leopard is very nice. The look and feel is much more consistent than before; Time Machine is gorgeous. Everything feels a bit more responsive, and Safari gives me far fewer “beachballs”. The controllable grid spacing in Finder is a great improvement. I haven’t tried Spaces yet, since I use multiple screens already.
More as I learn…
UPDATE: Apple has just released Login & Keychain Update 1.0 for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, which seems to fix the WiFi problem. Of course, in order to for you to be able to install it, your WiFi will have to stay up long enough for Software Update to download the fix…
UPDATE: Several comments here have useful links; in addition you might want to check out Eric’s blog.

The straw that breaks the camel's back

King Kaufman, Salon’s sports correspondent:

So I was thinking to myself, “What’s the deal with all this schlocky movie music Fox has been using on its postseason broadcasts?” Wednesday when the Fenway Park public address announcer introduced John Williams, the guy who writes all that schlocky movie music. He was there to conduct a subset of the Boston Pops for the national anthem.
The announcer called Williams “the epitome of our culture.”
And that’s when I decided to go live among the howler monkeys.

"Laws Are for Other People"

Here’s Christopher Orr in TNR:

Whether he intended to or not, at a town meeting in Iowa last night Rudy Giuliani offered what may be the most honest defense of torture I’ve seen from an American politician. It is also, of course, a deeply immoral one. Asked whether waterboarding constituted torture, he replied:
It depends on how it’s done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it. [emphasis mine]
What the United States is doing isn’t torture because it’s the United States doing it. I suspect this is the way a lot of torture apologists feel, but give Giuliani credit for being (I think) the first to come out and say it.

This is the same Giuliani who said at the United Nations, on October 1 2001:

On this issue – terrorism – the United Nations must draw a line. The era of moral relativism between those who practice or condone terrorism, and those nations who stand up against it, must end. Moral relativism does not have a place in this discussion and debate.
There is no moral way to sympathize with grossly immoral actions.

Hypocritical S.O.B….

"Never Attribute To Malice That Which Can Be Adequately Explained By Stupidity."

Quite apart from ignoring their own End User License Agreements, it now appears that Microsoft doesn’t understand the concepts of A/B testing and “phased deployment”. One user reported that:

Window Server Update Services forced Windows Desktop Services 3.01 on the fleet of machines even though admins had configured their system to install updates only for existing programs and the search program wasn’t installed on any machines (well, until then, anyway).

Of course, Microsoft’s EULAs are written so broadly that it is probably quite legal for them to trash your system by mistake.

Josh sticks a pin in Hitchens' "Islamofascism" balloon

Over at TPM, Josh wonders why Hitchens et al insist on using the term “Islamofacism” instead of some more accurate neologism like “Islamotarianism”. His diagnosis:

The battle against fascism and then later communism were not only by most measures the greatest battles and dangers the United States has ever faced. They were also the greatest mixes of military struggle and intellectual engagement. For people who make their livings with pens and keyboards especially that combination is simply intoxicating. That is, among other reasons, what is behind the very deserved reputation of George Orwell.
But this isn’t 1938 or 1948. A bummer perhaps if you’re aiming to write a political essay for the ages. But not a bad thing if you’re trying to live a life, raise a family or a bunch other things.

"A refugee is someone who isn’t really welcome in any country- including their own… especially their own."

Thoughts from the Iraqi blogger, Riverbend, now living in Damascus, Syria:

I hear about the estimated 1.5 million plus Iraqi refugees in Syria and shake my head, never really considering myself or my family as one of them. After all, refugees are people who sleep in tents and have no potable water or plumbing, right? Refugees carry their belongings in bags instead of suitcases and they don’t have cell phones or Internet access, right? Grasping my passport in my hand like my life depended on it, with two extra months in Syria stamped inside, it hit me how wrong I was. We were all refugees. I was suddenly a number. No matter how wealthy or educated or comfortable, a refugee is a refugee. A refugee is someone who isn’t really welcome in any country- including their own… especially their own.

How can you "freeze development for 10 years"?

SPEEDtv is reporting that the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council is freezing engine development in Formula 1 for 10 years.

“There will be a total freeze on engine development for a period of 10 years, starting from 2008,” the WMSC’s statement read. “A change can be made after five years but only with the unanimous agreement of all stakeholders and following a further two-year notice period. Total freeze means that there will be no exceptions for development of certain parts of the engine, as is the case under the current regulations.”

This is simply asinine. Imagine trying to do this in computing: can you even buy 10-year old chips today? ((OK, I’m sure that NASA and the DoD do this, but that’s hardly a pattern to emulate.)) And how far does it go? Does it mean that every metal component must be manufactured from exactly the same alloy, shaped, drilled and finished using the same equipment? Or suppose that an engine maker has been trying to perfect a radical design for the last few years, and decides that it can’t be made to work. Reintroducing a more conventional technology would presumably involve “development”, so they’re stuck.
One obvious outcome is that it will be impossible for a new engine manufacturer to break into the club: how can you introduce a new product without doing development? We already have a situation in which a handful of engine makers supply all teams: Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault, Toyota, Honda, and BMW. But this didn’t imply stasis. Several of them have been making noises about the introduction of new, energy-efficient, low-pollution technologies: diesels, hybrids, new types of fuel.
It’s hard to escape the conclusion that this decision was made to protect the weaker engine manufacturers who weren’t prepared (or able) to fund innovation. This presumably means Ferrari, possibly supported by Renault. But it sucks.