Shirish Agarwal: Fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkein
And before anybody comments, I know that Android is no longer interested in supporting FOSS, their loss, not ours but that is entirely a blog post/article in itself. so let s leave that aside for now.
edward@x1c9 ~/spelling> git clone git@github.com:flarum/flarum.git Cloning into &aposflarum&apos... remote: Enumerating objects: 1338, done. remote: Counting objects: 100% (42/42), done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (23/23), done. remote: Total 1338 (delta 21), reused 36 (delta 19), pack-reused 1296 Receiving objects: 100% (1338/1338), 725.02 KiB 1.09 MiB/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (720/720), done. edward@x1c9 ~/spelling> cd flarum/ edward@x1c9 ~/spelling/flarum (master)> codespell -q3 ./public/web.config:13: sensitve ==> sensitive edward@x1c9 ~/spelling/flarum (master)> gh repo fork Created fork EdwardBetts/flarum ? Would you like to add a remote for the fork? Yes Added remote origin edward@x1c9 ~/spelling/flarum (master)> git checkout -b spelling Switched to a new branch &aposspelling&apos edward@x1c9 ~/spelling/flarum (spelling)> codespell -q3 ./public/web.config:13: sensitve ==> sensitive edward@x1c9 ~/spelling/flarum (spelling)> codespell -q3 -w FIXED: ./public/web.config edward@x1c9 ~/spelling/flarum (spelling)> git commit -am "Correct spelling mistakes" [spelling bbb04c7] Correct spelling mistakes 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) edward@x1c9 ~/spelling/flarum (spelling)> git push -u origin Enumerating objects: 7, done. Counting objects: 100% (7/7), done. Delta compression using up to 8 threads Compressing objects: 100% (4/4), done. Writing objects: 100% (4/4), 360 bytes 360.00 KiB/s, done. Total 4 (delta 3), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0 remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (3/3), completed with 3 local objects. remote: remote: Create a pull request for &aposspelling&apos on GitHub by visiting: remote: https://github.com/EdwardBetts/flarum/pull/new/spelling remote: To github.com:EdwardBetts/flarum.git * [new branch] spelling -> spelling branch &aposspelling&apos set up to track &aposorigin/spelling&apos. edward@x1c9 ~/spelling/flarum (spelling)> gh pr create Creating pull request for EdwardBetts:spelling into master in flarum/flarum ? Title Correct spelling mistakes ? Choose a template Open a blank pull request ? Body <Received> ? What&aposs next? Submit https://github.com/flarum/flarum/pull/81 edward@x1c9 ~/spelling/flarum (spelling)>
| Series: | Discworld #17 |
| Publisher: | Harper |
| Copyright: | 1994 |
| Printing: | February 2014 |
| ISBN: | 0-06-227629-8 |
| Format: | Mass market |
| Pages: | 399 |
# get AMT info AMT_PASSWORD="$PASS" amttool $IP # reset the system and redirect BIOS messages to serial over lan AMT_PASSWORD="$PASS" amttool reset bios # access serial over lan console amtterm -p "$PASS" $IPThe following APT configuration enables the Ubuntu package wsmancli which had some features not in any Debian packages last time I checked.
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-updates universe deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic universeThis Cyberciti article has information on accessing KVM over AMT [2], I haven t tried to do that yet.
1+0i, which will transmit a pure sine wave at
exactly the center frequency of the radio.
var sine []complex
for i := range sine
sine[i] = complex(1.0, 0.0)
var sine []complex
for i := range sine
sine[i] = complex(-1.0, 0.0)
// angle is in radians - here we have
// 1.5 Pi (3 Tau) or 270 degrees.
var angle = pi * 1.5
// amplitude controls the transmitted
// strength of the carrier wave.
var amplitude = 1.0
// output buffer as above
var sine []complex
for i := range sine
sine[i] = complex(
amplitude*cos(angle),
amplitude*sin(angle),
)
var sampleRate = 2,621,440
var baudRate = 1024
// This represents the number of IQ samples
// required to send a single symbol at the
// provided baud and sample rate. I picked
// two numbers in order to avoid half samples.
// We will transmit each symbol in blocks of
// this size.
var samplesPerSymbol = sampleRate / baudRate
var samples = make([]complex, samplesPerSymbol)
// symbol is one of 1, -1 or 0.
for each symbol in symbols
for i := range samples
samples[i] = complex(symbol, 0)
// write the samples out to an output file
// or radio.
write(samples)
Before and during FOSDEM 2020, I agreed with the people (developers, supporters, managers) of the UBports Foundation to package the Unity8 Operating Environment for Debian. Since 27th Feb 2020, Unity8 has now become Lomiri.
Recent Uploads to Debian related to Lomiri (Feb - May 2021)
Over the past 4 months I attended 14 of the weekly scheduled UBports development sync sessions and worked on the following bits and pieces regarding Lomiri in Debian:
The Debian Janitor is an automated system that commits fixes for (minor) issues in Debian packages that can be fixed by software. It gradually started proposing merges in early December. The first set of changes sent out ran lintian-brush on sid packages maintained in Git. This post is part of a series about the progress of the Janitor.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 | #!/usr/bin/python3
from debmutate.control import ControlEditor
from lintian_brush.fixer import report_result, fixed_lintian_tag
with ControlEditor() as updater:
for para in updater.paragraphs:
if para.get("Priority") == "extra":
para["Priority"] = "optional"
fixed_lintian_tag(
para, 'priority-extra-is-replaced-by-priority-optional')
report_result("Change priority extra to priority optional.")
|
Footnotes
| [1] | temporarily unavailable due to Debian bug #960156 but the Janitor is relying on historical data |
For more information about the Janitor's lintian-fixes efforts, see the landing page
DebConf8
This tshirt is 12 years old and from DebConf8.
DebConf8 was my 6th DebConf and took place in Mar de la Plata, Argentina.
Also this is my 6th post in this series of posts about DebConfs and for the
last two days for the first time I failed my plan to do one post per day.
And while two days ago I still planned to catch up on this by doing more than one
post in a day, I have now decided to give in to realities, which mostly
translates to sudden fantastic weather in Hamburg and other summer
related changes in life. So yeah, I still plan to do short posts about all the
DebConfs I was lucky to attend, but there might be days without a blog post.
Anyhow, Mar de la Plata.
When we held DebConf in Argentina it was winter there, meaning locals and other folks
would wear jackets, scarfs, probably gloves, while many Debian folks not so much.
Andreas Tille freaked out and/or amazed local people by going swimming in the sea
every morning. And when I told Stephen Gran that even I would find it a bit cold with
just a tshirt he replied "na, the weather is fine, just like british summer", while
it was 14 celcius and mildly raining.
DebConf8 was the first time I've met Valessio Brito, who I had worked together
since at least DebConf6. That meeting was really super nice, Valessio is such a lovely person.
Back in 2008 however, there was just one problem: his spoken English was worse than
his written one, and that was already hard to parse sometimes. Fast forward
eleven years to Curitiba last year and boom, Valessio speaks really nice English now.
And, you might wonder why I'm telling this, especially if you were exposed to my Spanish
back then and also now. So my point in telling this story about Valessio is to illustrate two things:
a.) one can contribute to Debian without speaking/writing much English, Valessio did
lots of great artwork since DebConf6 and b.) one can learn English by doing Debian stuff. It worked
for me too!
During set up of the conference there was one very memorable moment, some time after the
openssl maintainer, Kurt Roeckx arrived at the venue: Shortly
before DebConf8 Luciano Bello, from Argentina no less, had found
CVE-2008-0166 which
basically compromised the security of sshd of all Debian and Ubuntu installations done in the last
4 years (IIRC two Debian releases were affected) and which was
commented heavily and noticed everywhere.
So poor Kurt arrived and
wondered whether we would all hate him, how many toilets he would have to clean and what not...
And then, someone rather quickly noticed this, approached some people and suddenly
a bunch of people at DebConf were group-hugging Kurt
and then we were all smiling and continuing doing set up of the conference.
That moment is one of my most joyful memories of all DebConfs and partly explains
why I remember little about the conference itself, everything else pales in comparison and
most things pale over the years anyway. As I remember it, the conference ran
very smoothly in the end, despite quite some organisational problems right before the start.
But as usual, once the geeks arrive and are happily geeking, things start to run smooth,
also because Debian people are kind and smart and give hands and brain were needed.
And like other DebConfs, Mar de la Plata also had moments which I want to share but I will only hint
about, so it's up to you to imagine the special leaves which were brought to that cheese and wine party! 
Update: added another xkcd link, spelled out Kurt's name after talking to him and added a link to a video of the group hug.
DebConf7
This tshirt is 13 years old and from DebConf7.
DebConf7 was my 5th DebConf and took place in Edinburgh, Scotland.
And finally I could tell people I was a DD 
Though as you can guess,
that's yet another story to be told. So anyway, Edinburgh.
I don't recall exactly whether the video team had to record 6 or 7 talk rooms
on 4 floors, but this was probably the most intense set up we ran. And we
ran a lot, from floor to floor, and room to room.
DebConf7 was also special because it had a very special night venue, which
was in an ex-church in a rather normal building, operated as sort of community
center or some such, while the old church interior was still very much visible
as in everything new was build around the old stuff.
And while the night venue was cool, it also ment we (video team) had
no access to our machines over night (or for much of the evening),
because we had to leave the university over night and the networking situation
didn't allow remote access with the bandwidth needed to do anything video.
The night venue had some very simple house rules, like don't rearrange stuff,
don't break stuff,
don't fix stuff and just a few little more and of course we broke them in the best
possible way: Toresbe with the help of people I don't remember
fixed the organ, which was broken
for decades. And so the house sounded in some very nice new old tune
and I think everybody was happy we broke that rule.
I believe the city is really nice from the little I've seen of it.
A very nice old town, a big castle on the hill 
I'm not sure whether
I missed the day trip to Glasgow to fix video things or to rest or both...
Another thing I missed was getting a kilt, for which Phil Hands made a terrific
design (update: the design is called tartan
and was made by Phil indeed!), which spelled
Debian in morse code. That was pretty cool and the kilts are really nice
on DebConf group pictures since then. And if you've been wearing this
kilt regularily for the last 13 years it was probably also a sensible
investment.
It seems I don't have that many more memories of this DebConf, British
power plugs and how to hack them comes to my mind and some other stuff
here and there, but I remember less than previous years. I'm blaming this
on the intense video setup and also on the sheer amount of people, which
was the hightest until then and for some years, I believe maybe even
until Heidelberg 8 years later. IIRC there were around 470 people there
and over my first five years of DebConf I was incredible lucky to make
many friends in Debian, so I probably just hung out and had good times.
Artemisia Lomi or Artemisia Gentileschi (US: / d nt l ski, -ti -/, Italian: [arte mi zja d enti leski]; July 8, 1593 c. 1656) was an Italian Baroque painter, now considered one of the most accomplished seventeenth-century artists working in the dramatic style of Caravaggio. In an era when women had few opportunities to pursue artistic training or work as professional artists, Artemisia was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence and had an international clientele.
Maria Pellegrina Amoretti (1756 1787), was an Italian lawyer. She is referred to as the first woman to graduate in law in Italy, and the third woman to earn a degree.
Laura Maria Caterina Bassi (October 1711 20 February 1778) was an Italian physicist and academic. She received a doctoral degree in Philosophy from the University of Bologna in May 1732. She was the first woman to earn a professorship in physics at a university. She is recognized as the first woman in the world to be appointed a university chair in a scientific field of studies. Bassi contributed immensely to the field of science while also helping to spread the study of Newtonian mechanics through Italy.
Maria Gaetana Agnesi (UK: / n je zi/ an-YAY-zee,[1] US: / n -/ ahn-,[2][3] Italian: [ma ri a ae ta na a zi, - e z-];[4] 16 May 1718 9 January 1799) was an Italian mathematician, philosopher, theologian, and humanitarian. She was the first woman to write a mathematics handbook and the first woman appointed as a mathematics professor at a university.[5]
Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia (US: /k r n ro p sko pi /,[4] Italian: [ lena lu kr ttsja kor na ro pi sk pja]) or Elena Lucrezia Corner (Italian: [kor n r]; 5 June 1646 26 July 1684), also known in English as Helen Cornaro, was a Venetian philosopher of noble descent who in 1678 became one of the first women to receive an academic degree from a university, and the first to receive a Doctor of Philosophy degree.
Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori (/ m nt s ri/ MON-tiss-OR-ee, Italian: [ma ri a montes s ri]; August 31, 1870 May 6, 1952) was an Italian physician and educator best known for the philosophy of education that bears her name, and her writing on scientific pedagogy. At an early age, Montessori broke gender barriers and expectations when she enrolled in classes at an all-boys technical school, with hopes of becoming an engineer. She soon had a change of heart and began medical school at the Sapienza University of Rome, where she graduated with honors in 1896. Her educational method is still in use today in many public and private schools throughout the world.
Rita Levi-Montalcini OMRI OMCA (US: / le vi mo nt l t i ni, l v-, li vi m nt l -/, Italian: [ ri ta l vi montal t i ni]; 22 April 1909 30 December 2012) was an Italian Nobel laureate, honored for her work in neurobiology. She was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with colleague Stanley Cohen for the discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF). From 2001 until her death, she also served in the Italian Senate as a Senator for Life. This honor was given due to her significant scientific contributions. On 22 April 2009, she became the first Nobel laureate ever to reach the age of 100, and the event was feted with a party at Rome's City Hall. At the time of her death, she was the oldest living Nobel laureate.
Margherita Hack Knight Grand Cross OMRI (Italian: [mar e ri ta (h)ak]; 12 June 1922 29 June 2013) was an Italian astrophysicist and scientific disseminator. The asteroid 8558 Hack, discovered in 1995, was named in her honour.
Samantha Cristoforetti (Italian pronunciation: [sa manta kristofo retti]; born 26 April 1977, in Milan) is an Italian European Space Agency astronaut, former Italian Air Force pilot and engineer. She holds the record for the longest uninterrupted spaceflight by a European astronaut (199 days, 16 hours), and until June 2017 held the record for the longest single space flight by a woman until this was broken by Peggy Whitson and later by Christina Koch. She is also the first Italian woman in space. Samantha Cristoforetti is also known as the first person who brewed an espresso in space.
Sealioning (also spelled sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment which consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity.[1][2][3][4] It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate".[5]
Tone policing (also tone trolling, tone argument, and tone fallacy) is an ad hominem (personal attack) and antidebate tactic based on criticizing a person for expressing emotion. Tone policing detracts from the validity of a statement by attacking the tone in which it was presented rather than the message itself.
"A brawler who tattoos a message onto his knuckles does not throw every punch with the weight of First Amendment protection behind him," the brief stated. "Conduct like this does not constitute speech, nor should it. A deliberate attempt to cause physical injury to someone does not come close to the expression which the First Amendment is designed to protect."
It s no secret that times are changing. It used to be that men were men, jokes were jokes, and all facts came from one white guy in a suit who you trusted because he looked like your dad. Now I know I could get in a lot of trouble for just saying this, but I don t care because someone has to tell the truth: These days, you can t say anything racist at all without being called a racist.
Russia's neighbor has developed a plan for countering misinformation. Can it be exported to the rest of the world?
So, I wrote my BIFF Response but Marvin wrote me another angry email. Actually, he wrote 6 more this week, so what s up with that? Why didn t he stop after my first email?
The BIFF Response Method will teach you how to respond to angry emails, texts, or social media posts while maintaining your dignity and personal power.
This is an extension to last month s article/sharing where I had shared the changes that had transpired in the last 2-3 months. Now am in a position to share the kind of issues a user can go through in case he is looking for support from IRCTC to help him/her go cashless. If you a new user to use IRCTC services you wouldn t go through this trouble.
For those who might have TL;DR issues it s about how hard it can become to get digital credentials fixed in IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation)
a. 2 months back Indian Prime Minister gave a call incentivizing people to use digital means to do any commercial activities. One of the big organizations which took/takes part is IRCTC which handles the responsibility for e-ticketing millions of Rail tickets for common people. In India, a massive percentage moves by train as it s cheaper than going by Air.
A typical fare from say Pune Delhi (capital of India) by second class sleeper would be INR 645/- for a distance of roughly 1600 odd kms and these are monopoly rates, there are no private trains and I m not suggesting anything of that sort, just making sure that people know.
An economy class ticket by Air for the same distance would be anywhere between INR 2500-3500/- for a 2 hour flight between different airlines. Last I checked there are around 8 mainstream airlines including flag-carrier Air India.
About 30% of the population live on less than a dollar and a half a day which would come around INR 100/-.
There was a comment some six months back on getting more people out of the poverty line. But as there are lots of manipulations in numbers for who and what denotes above poor and below poor in India and lot of it has to do with politics it s not something which would be easily fixable.
There are lots to be said in that arena but this article is not an appropriate blog-post for that.
All in all, it s only 3-5% of the population at the most who can travel via Air if situation demands and around 1-2% who might be frequent, business or leisure travellers.
Now while I can thankfully afford an Air Ticket if the situation so demands, my mother gets motion sickness so while together we can only travel by train.
b. With the above background, I had registered with IRCTC few years ago with another number (dual-SIM) I had purchased and was thinking that I would be using this long-term (seems to my first big mistake, hindsight 50:50) . This was somewhere in 2006/2007.
c. Few months later I found that the other service provider wasn t giving good service or was not upto mark. I was using IDEA (the main mobile operator) throughout those times.
d. As I didn t need the service that much, didn t think to inform them that I want to change to another service provider at that point in time (possibly the biggest mistake, hindsight 50:50)
e. In July 2016 itself IRCTC cut service fees,
f. This was shared as a NEW news item/policy decision at November-end 2016 .
g. While I have done all that has been asked by irctc-care haven t still got the issues resolved IRCTC s e-mail id care@irctc.co.in
Now in detail
This is my first e-mail sent to IRCTC in June 2016
Dear Customer care, I had applied and got username and password sometime back . TheThere was lot of back and forth with various individuals on IRCTC and after a lot of back and forth, this is the final e-mail I got from them somewhere in August 2016, he writes
number I had used to register with IRCTC was xxxxxxxxxx (BSNL mobile number not used anymore) . My mobile was lost and along with that the number was also lost. I had filed a complaint with the police and stopped that number as well. Now I have an another mobile number but have forgotten both the password and the security answer that I had given when I had registered . I do have all the conversations I had both with the ticketadmn@irctc.co.in as well as care@irctc.co.in if needed to prove my identity. The new number I want to tie it with is xxxxxxxxxx (IDEA number in-use for last 10 years) I see two options :- a. Tie the other number with my e-mail address b. Take out the e-mail address from the database so that I can fill in
as a new applicant. Looking forward to hear from you.
Dear Customer, We request you to send mobile bill of your mobile number if it is post paid or if it is prepaid then contact to your service provider and they will give you valid proof of your mobile number or they will give you in written on company head letter so that we may update your mobile number to update so that you may reset your password through mobile OTP.IRCTC s response seemed responsible, valid and thought it would be a cake-walk as private providers are supposed to be much more efficient than public ones. The experience proved how wrong was I trust them with doing the right thing 1. First I tried the twitter handle to see how IDEA uses their twitter handle. 2. The idea customer care twitter handle was mild in its response. 3. After sometime I realized that the only way out of this quagmire would perhaps be to go to a brick-mortar shop and get it resolved face-to-face. I went twice or thrice but each time something or the other would happen. On the fourth and final time, I was able to get to the big Official shop only to be told they can t do anything about this and I would have to the appellate body to get the reply. The e-mail address which they shared (and I found it later) was wrong. I sent a somewhat longish e-mail sharing all the details and got bounce-backs. The correct e-mail address for the IDEA Maharashtra appellate body is appellette.mh@idea.aditybirla.com I searched online and after a bit of hit and miss finally got the relevant address. Then finally on 30th December, 2016 wrote a short email to the service provider as follows
and Kindly inform you that you can update your profile by yourself also. 1.login on IRCTC website
2.after login successfully move courser on my profile tab.
3.then click on update profile
4.re-enter your password then you can update your profile
5.click on user-profile then email id.
6. click on update. Still you face any problem related to update profile please revert to us with the screen shots of error message which you will get at the time of update profile . Thanks & Regards Parivesh Patel
Executive, Customer Care
care@irctc.co.in
http://www.irctc.co.in
[#3730034]
Dear Sir,Few days later I got this short e-mail from them
I have been using prepaid mobile connection number xxxxxxx taken from IDEA for last 10 odd years. I want to register myself with IRCTC for online railway booking using
my IDEA mobile number. Earlier, I was having a BSNL connection which I discontinued 4 years back, For re-registering myself with IRCTC, I have to fulfill their latest
requirements as shown in the email below . It is requested that I please be issued a letter confirming my
credentials with your esteemed firm. I contacted your local office at corner of Law College Road and
Bhandarkar Road, Pune (reference number Q1 84786060793) who
refused to provide me any letter and have advised me to contact on the
above e-mail address, hence this request is being forwarded to you. Please do the needful at your earliest.
Dear Customer, Greetings for the day! This is with reference to your email regarding services. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience caused to you and delay in response. We regret to inform you that we are unable to provide demographic details from our end as provision for same is not available with us. Should you need any further assistance, please call our Customer Service help line number 9822012345 or email us at customercare@idea.adityabirla.com by mentioning ten digit Idea mobile number in subject line. Thanks & Regards, Javed Khan Customer Service Team IDEA Cellular Limited- Maharashtra & Goa Circle.Now I was at almost my wit s end. Few days before, I had re-affirmed my e-mail address to IDEA . I went to the IDEA care site, registered with my credentials. While the https connection to the page is weak, but let s not dwell on that atm. I logged into the site, I went through all the drop-down menus and came across My Account > Raise a request link which I clicked on . This came to a page where I could raise requests for various things. One of the options given there was Bill Delivery. As I wasn t a postpaid user but a prepaid user didn t know if that would work or not I still clicked on it. It said it would take 4 days for that to happen. I absently filed it away as I was somewhat sure that nothing would happen from my previous experience with IDEA. But this time the IDEA support staff came through and shared a toll-free SMS number and message format that I could use to generate call details from the last 6 months. The toll-free number from IDEA is 12345 and the message format is EBILL MON (short-form for month so if it s January would be jan, so on and so forth). After gathering all the required credentials, sent my last mail to IRCTC about a week, 10 days back
Dear Mr. Parivesh Patel, I was out-of-town and couldn t do the needful so sorry for the delay.Haven t heard anything them from them, apart from a generated token number, each time you send a reply happens. This time it was #4763548 The whole sequence of events throws a lot of troubling questions a. Could IRCTC done a better job of articulating their need to me instead of the run-around I was given ? b. Shouldn t there be a time limit to accounts from which no transactions have been done ? I hadn t done a single transaction since registering. When cell service providers including BSNL takes number out after a year of not using a number, why is that account active for so long ? c. As that account didn t have OTP at registration, dunno if it s being used for illegal activities or something. Update This doesn t seem to be a unique thing at all. Just sampling some of the tweets by people at @IRCTC_LTD https://twitter.com/praveen4al/status/775614978258718721 https://twitter.com/vis_nov25/status/786062572390932480 https://twitter.com/ShubhamDevadiya/status/794241443950948352 https://twitter.com/rajeshhindustan/status/798028633759584256 https://twitter.com/ameetsangita/status/810081624343908352 https://twitter.com/grkisback/status/813733835213078528 https://twitter.com/gbalaji_/status/804230235625394177 https://twitter.com/chandhu_nr/status/800675627384721409 , all of this just goes to show how un-unique the situation really is.
Now that I m back in town, I have been able to put together my prepaid
bills of last 6 months which should make it easy to establish my
identity. As had shared before, I don t remember my old password and the old
mobile number (BSNL number) is no longer accessible so can t go
through that route. Please let me know the next steps in correcting the existing IRCTC
account (which I haven t operated ever) so I can start using it to
book my tickets. Look forward to hearing from you.
Here is my monthly update covering what I have been doing in the free software world (previous month):
diffoscope is our in-depth and content-aware diff utility that can locate and diagnose reproducibility issues.
strip-nondeterminism is our tool to remove specific non-deterministic results from a completed build.
trydiffoscope is a web-based version of the diffoscope in-depth and content-aware diff utility. Continued thanks to Bytemark for sponsoring the hardware.
buildinfo.debian.net is my experiment into how to process, store and distribute .buildinfo files after the Debian archive software has processed them.
Whilst I managed to read almost sixty books in 2016 here are ten of my favourites in no particular order.
Disappointments this year include Stewart Lee's Content Provider (nothing like his stand-up), Christopher Hitchens' And Yet (his best essays are already published) and Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (great exposition, bizarre conclusion).
The worst book I finished, by far, was Mark Edward's Follow You Home.
Animal QC
Gary Bell, QC
Subtitled My Preposterous Life, this rags-to-riches story about a working-class boy turned eminent lawyer would be highly readable as a dry and factual account but I am compelled to include it here for its extremely entertaining style of writing.
Full of unsurprising quotes that take one unaware: would you really expect a now-Queen's Counsel to "heartily suggest that if you find yourself suffering from dysentery in foreign climes you do not medicate it with lobster thermidor and a bottle of Ecuadorian red?"
A real good yarn.
So You've Been Publically Shamed
Jon Ronson
The author was initially recommended to me by Brad but I believe I started out with the wrong book. In fact, I even had my doubts about this one, prematurely judging from the title that it was merely cashing-in on a fairly recent internet phenomenon like his more recent shallow take on Trump and the alt-Right but in the end I read Publically Shamed thrice in quick succession.
I would particularly endorse the audiobook version: Ronson's deadpan drawl suits his writing perfectly.
The Obstacle is the Way
Ryan Holiday
Whilst everyone else appears to be obligated to include Ryan's recent Ego is the Enemy in their Best of 2016 lists I was actually taken by his earlier "introduction by stealth" to stoic philosophy.
Certainly not your typical self-help book, this is "a manual to turn to in troubling times".
Returning to this work at least three times over the year even splashing out on the audiobook at some point I feel like I learned a great deal, although it is now difficult to pinpoint exactly what. Perhaps another read in 2017 is thus in order
Layer Cake
J.J. Connolly
To judge a book in comparison to the film is to do both a disservice, but reading the book of Layer Cake really underscored just how well the film played to the strengths of that medium.
All of the aspects that would not have worked had been carefully excised from the screenplay, ironically leaving more rewarding "layers" for readers attempting the book. A parallel adaption here might be No Country for Old Men - I would love to read (or write) a comparative essay between these two adaptions although McCarthy's novel is certainly the superior source material.
Lying
Sam Harris
I've absorbed a lot of Sam Harris's uvre this year in the form of his books but moreover via his compelling podcast. I'm especially fond of Waking Up on spirituality without religion and would rank that as my favourite work of his.
Lying is a comparatively short read, more of a long essay in fact, where he argues that we can radically simplify our lives by merely telling the truth in situations where others invariably lie. Whilst it would take a brave soul to adopt his approach his case is superlatively well-argued and a delight to read.
Letters from a Stoic
Seneca
Great pleasure is to be found not only in keeping up an old and established friendship but also in beginning and building up a new one. Reading this in a beautifully svelte hardback, I tackled a randomly-chosen letter per day rather than attempting to read it cover-to-cover. Breaking with a life-long tradition, I even decided to highlight sections in pen so I could return to them at ease. I hope it's not too hackneyed to claim I gained a lot from "building up" a relationship with this book. Alas, it is one of those books that is too easy to recommend given that it might make one appear wise and learned, but if you find yourself in a slump, either in life or in your reading habits, it certainly has my approval.
Solo: A James Bond Novel
William Boyd
I must have read all of the canonical Fleming novels as a teenager and Solo really rewards anyone who has done so. It would certainly punish anyone expecting a Goldeneye or at least be a little too foreign to be enjoyed.
Indeed, its really a pastiche of these originals, both in terms of the time period, general tone (Bond is more somber; more vulnerable) and in various obsessions of Fleming's writing, such as the overly-detailed description of the gambling and dining tables. In this universe, 007's restaurant expenses probably contributed signifcantly to the downfall of the British Empire, let alone his waistline.
Bond flicking through a ornithological book at one point was a cute touch
The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck
Mark Manson
Certainly a wildcard to include here and not without its problems, The Subtle Art is a curious manifesto on how to approach life. Whilst Manson expouses an age-old philosophy of grounding yourself and ignoring the accumulation of flatscreen TVs, etc. he manages to do so in a fresh and provocative "21st-centry gonzo" style.
Highly entertaining, at one point the author posits an alternative superhero ("Disappointment Panda") that dishes out unsolicited and uncomfortable truths to strangers before simply walking away: "You know, if you make more money, that s not going to make your kids love you," or: "What you consider friendship is really just your constant attempts to impress people."
Ouch.
The Fourth Protocol
Frederick Forsyth
I have a crystal-clear memory from my childhood of watching a single scene from a film in the dead of night: Pierce Brosnan sets a nuclear device to detonate after he can get away but a double-crossing accomplice surreptitiously brings the timetable forward in order that the bomb also disposes of him
Anyway, at some point whilst reading The Fourth Protocol it dawned on me that this was that book. I might thus be giving the book more credit due to this highly satisfying connection but I think it stands alone as a superlative political page-turner and is still approachable outside the machinations of the Cold War.
The Partner
John Grisham
After indulging in a bit too much non-fiction and an aborted attempt at The Ministry of Fear, I turned to a few so-called lower-brow writers such as Jeffrey Archer, etc.
However, it was The Partner that turned out to be a real page-turner for somewhat undefinable reasons. Alas, it appears the rest of the author's output is unfortunately in the same vein (laywers, etc.) so I am hesitant to immediately begin others but judging from various lists online I am glad I approached this one first.
Shogun: The First Novel of the Asian saga
James Clavell
Despite its length, I simply couldn't resist returning to Shogun this year although it did fatigue me to the point that I have still yet to commence on its sequel, Tai-Pan.
Like any good musical composition, one is always rewarded by returning to a book and I took great delight in uncovering more symbolism throughout (such as noticing that one of the first words Blackthorne learns in Japanese is "truth") but also really savouring the tragic arcs that run throughout the novel, some beautiful phrases ("The day seemed to lose its warmth ") and its wistful themes of inevitability and karma.
Moxie, the lead developer of the Signal secure communication application, recently blogged on the tradeoffs between providing a supportable federated service and providing a compelling application that gains significant adoption. There's a set of perfectly reasonable arguments around that that I don't want to rehash - regardless of feelings on the benefits of federation in general, there's certainly an increase in engineering cost in providing a stable intra-server protocol that still allows for addition of new features, and the person leading a project gets to make the decision about whether that's a valid tradeoff.
This is based on joint work with Gregor Aisch and Josh Keller of the New York Times.
A new package gunsales is now on the CRAN network for R. It is based the NYTimes/gunsales repository underlying the excellent New York Times visualizations, first published first in December 2015 and updated with more recent data since.
The analysis takes public government data on gun sales from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The original data is scraped from the pdf, included in the package, and analysed in a cross-section and time-series manner. The standard US Census tool X-13ARIMA-SEATS is used to deseasonalize the timeseries at the national or state level. (Note that Buzzfeed also published data and (Python) code in another GitHub repo.)
As an aside, it was the use of X-13ARIMA-SEATS here -- and its somewhat awkward and manual installation also seen in the initial versions of the code in the NYTimes/gunsales repo -- which lead to the recent work by Christoph Sax and myself. We now provide a new package x13binary on CRAN so that Christoph's excellent seasonal package can simply depend upon it and have a working binary provided and installed ready to use; see the recent blog post for more. The net result is that a package like this new gunsales project can simply depend upon seasonal and also be assurred that x13binary "just works". As Martha would say, "A Good Thing".
Back to the gunsales project. Following the initial publication of the repository with the data and R code in a simple script, I felt compelled to reorganize it as a package. Packages for R, as we teach our students, colleagues, or anybody else who wants to listen are really the best way to bundle code, data, documentation (i.e. vignettes) and tests. All that exists now in the gunsales package.
The package now has one main function, analysis(), which returns a single dataframe object. This dataframe object can then be fed to two plotting functions. The first, plot_gunsales(), will then recreate all the (base R) plots from the original code base. The second, ggplot_gunsales(), does the same but via ggplot2.
This should give anybody the ability to look at the data, study the transformations done, form and maybe test new hypotheses and visualize in manner comparable to the original publication.
As an amuse gueule, here are the key plots also shown in the main README.md at GitHub:
We look forward to more remixes and analysis of this data. The plan of the GitHub repository is to keep the data set updated as new data points are published.
This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.
Since moving to Japan, I got more and more interested in history, especially the recent history of the 20th century. The book I just finished, Ian Buruma (Wiki, home page) Wages of Guilt Memories of War in Germany and Japan (Independent, NYRB), has been a revelation for me. As an Austrian living in Japan, I am experiencing the discrepancy between these two countries with respect to their treatment of war legacy practically daily, and many of my blog entries revolve around the topic of Japanese non-reconciliation.
Willy Brandt went down on his knees in the Warsaw ghetto, after a functioning democracy had been established in the Federal Republic of Germany, not before. But Japan, shielded from the evil world, has grown into an Oskar Matzerath: opportunistic, stunted, and haunted by demons, which it tries to ignore by burying them in the sand, like Oskar s drum.
Ian Buruma, Wages of Guilt, Clearing Up the Ruins
The comparison of Germany and Japan with respect to their recent history as laid out in Buruma s book throws a spotlight on various aspects of the psychology of German and Japanese population, while at the same time not falling into the easy trap of explaining everything with difference in the guilt culture. A book of great depth and broad insights everyone having even the slightest interest in these topics should read.
This difference between (West) German and Japanese textbooks is not just a matter of detail; it shows a gap in perception.Only thinking about giving a halfway full account of this book is something impossible for me. The sheer amount of information, both on the German and Japanese side, is impressive. His incredible background (studies of Chinese literature and Japanese movie!) and long years as journalist, editor, etc, enriches the book with facets normally not available: In particular his knowledge of both the German and Japanese movie history, and the reflection of history in movies, were complete new aspects for me (see my recent post (in Japanese)). The book is comprised of four parts: The first with the chapters War Against the West and Romance of the Ruins; the second with the chapters Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Nanking; the third with History on Trial, Textbook Resistance, and Memorials, Museums, and Monuments; and the last part with A Normal Country, Two Normal Towns, and Clearing Up the Ruins. Let us look at the chapters in turn:
Ian Buruma, Wages of Guilt, Romance of the Ruins
What is so convenient in the cases of Germany and Japan is that pacifism happens to be a high-minded way to dull the pain of historical guilt. Or, conversely, if one wallows in it, pacifism turns national guilt into a virtue, almost a mark of superiority, when compared to the complacency of other nations.
Hitler s doom and the emperor s speech, the end of one symbol and the odd continuity of another. Whatever their symbolic differences, both would be associated forever with ruins ruined cities, ruined people, ruined ideals.
Here the past had fossilized into something monumental or, as Adorno would have put it, museal.
The problem with this quasi-religious view of history is that it makes it hard to discuss past events in anything but nonsecular terms. Visions of absolute evil are unique, and they are beyond human explanation or even comprehension. To explain is hubristic and amoral. If this is true of Auschwitz, it is even more true of Hiroshima. The irony is that while there can be no justification for Auschwitz unless one believes in Hitler s murderous ideology, the case for Hiroshima is at least open to debate. The A-bomb might have saved lives; it might have shortened the war. But such arguments are incompatible with the Hiroshima spirit.
Yet the question remains whether the raping and killing of thousands of women, and the massacre of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of other unarmed people, in the course of six weeks, can still be called extreme conduct in the heat of battle. The question is pertinent, particularly when such extreme violence is justified by an ideology which teaches the aggressors that killing an inferior race is in accordance with the will of their divine emperor.
The Nuremberg trials were to be a history lesson, then, as well as a symbolic punishment of the German people a moral history lesson cloaked in all the ceremonial trappings of due legal process. They were the closest that man, or at least the men belonging to the victorious powers, could come to dispensing divine justice.Also, the differences in war trials in East and West Germany is compared. The East Germany Waldheimer trials, as well as the thorough purge of Nazis from East German jurisdiction and politics, which was in stark contrast to both West German s very restricted trials, as well as Japan s absolute non-purge of criminals.
As long as the emperor lived, Japanese would have trouble being honest about the past. For he had been formally responsible for everything, and by holding him responsible for nothing, everybody was absolved, except, of course, for a number of military and civilian scapegoats, Officers and Outlaws, who fell victim to victors justice.
The judges and some of the counsel for the ministry sat back with their eyes closed, in deep concentration, or fast asleep. Perhaps they were bored, because they had heard it all before. Perhaps they thought it was a pointless exercise, since they knew already how the case would end. But it was not a pointless exercise. For Ienaga Saburo had kept alive a vital debate for twenty-seven years. One cussed schoolteacher and several hundred supporters at the courthouse might not seem much, but it was enough to show that, this time, someone was fighting back.
The tragedy is not just that the suicide pilots died young. Soldiers (and civilians) do that in wars everywhere. What is so awful about the memory of their deaths is the cloying sentimentality that was meant to justify their self-immolation. There is no reason to suppose they didn t believe in the patriotic gush about cherry blossoms and sacrifice, no matter how conventional it was at the time. Which was exactly the point: they were made to rejoice in their own death. It was the exploitation of their youthful idealism that made it such a wicked enterprise. And this point is still completely missed at the Peace Museum today.
It was not an ignoble enterprise, but he should have recognized that Historisierung, even forty-three years after the war, was still a highly risky business. For a normal society, a society not haunted by ghosts, cannot be achieved by normalizing history, or by waving cross and garlic. More the other way around: when society has become sufficiently open and free to look back, from the point of view neither of the victim nor of the criminal, but of the critic, only then will the ghosts be laid to rest.On the Japanese side the case of Motoshima Hitoshi , who dared to question Hirohito:
Forty-three years have passed since the end of the war, and I think we have had enough chance to reflect on the nature of that war. From reading various accounts from abroad and having been a soldier myself, involved in military education, I do believe that the emperor bore responsibility for the war.which led to hitherto unseen of demonstration of extreme-right-wing groups issuing death treats that lead to a failed assassination of Motoshima, all under the completely complacent Japanese police and politics letting the right-wingers play their game.
By breaking a Japanese taboo, Motoshima struck a blow for a more open, more normal political society, and very nearly lost his life. Jenninger, I like to think, wanted to strike a blow for the same, but failed, and lost his job. Perhaps he wasn t up to the task. Or perhaps even West Germany was not yet normal enough to hear his message.
I asked him again about the local camp and the small hidden memorial. Dominik showed signs of distress. It was difficult, he admitted, very difficult. I know what you mean. But let me give you my personal opinion. When you have a crippled arm, you don t really want to show it around. It was a low point in our history, back then. But it was only twelve years in thousands of years of history. And so people tend to hide it, just as a person with a crippled arm is not likely to wear a short-sleeved shirt.A similar incident is recounted on the Japanese side, the Hanaoka incident (detailed article) and its unveiling by Nozoe Kenji, where 800 Chinese slave workers, after escaping from a forced-work camp for the Kajima Corporation, where rabbit-hunted down and slaughtered. He, too, got death threats, and was virtually expelled from his home area because he dared to publish his findings.
I think it is this basic distrust, this refusal to be told what to think by authorities, this cussed insistence on asking questions, on hearing the truth, that binds together Nozoe, Rosmus, and others like them. There are not many such people in Japan, or anywhere else for that matter. And I suspect they are not much liked wherever they live.
The state was run by virtually the same bureaucracy that ran the Japanese empire, and the electoral system was rigged to help the same corrupt conservative party to stay in power for almost forty years. This arrangement suited the United States, as well as Japanese bureaucrats, LDP politicians, and the large industrial combines, for it ensured that Japan remained a rich and stable ally against Communism. But it also helped to stifle public debate and stopped the Japanese from growing up politically.His description of current Japanese society, written in 1995, is still hauntingly true in 2016:
There is something intensely irritating about the infantilism of postwar Japanese culture: the ubiquitous chirping voices of women pretending to be girls; the Disneylandish architecture of Japanese main streets, where everything is reduced to a sugary cuteness; the screeching television talents rolling about and carrying on like kindergarten clowns; the armies of blue-suited salarymen straphanging on the subway trains, reading boys comics, the maudlin love for old school songs and cuddly mama-sans.
The Nanking Massacre, for leftists and many liberals too, is the main symbol of Japanese militarism, supported by the imperial (and imperialist) cult. Which is why it is a keystone of postwar pacifism. Article Nine of the constitution is necessary to avoid another Nanking Massacre. The nationalist right takes the opposite view. To restore the true identity of Japan, the emperor must be reinstated as a religious head of state, and Article Nine must be revised to make Japan a legitimate military power again. For this reason, the Nanking Massacre, or any other example of extreme Japanese aggression, has to be ignored, softened, or denied.While there are signs of resistance in the streets of Japan (Okinawa and the Hanako bay, the demonstrations against secrecy law and reversion of the constitution), we are still to see a change influenced by the people in a country ruled and distributed by oligarchs. I don t think there will be another Nanking Massacre in the near future, but Buruma s books shows that we are heading back to a nationalistic regime similar to pre-war times, just covered with a democratic veil to distract critics.
Ian Buruma, Wages of Guilt, Nanking
[ ] mainstream conservatives made a deliberate attempt to distract people s attention from war and politics by concentrating on economic growth.
The curious thing was that much of what attracted Japanese to Germany before the war Prussian authoritarianism, romantic nationalism, pseudo-scientific racialism had lingered in Japan while becoming distinctly unfashionable in Germany.In Romance of the Ruins:
The point of all this is that Ikeda s promise of riches was the final stage of what came to be known as the reverse course, the turn away from a leftist, pacifist, neutral Japan a Japan that would never again be involved in any wars, that would resist any form of imperialism, that had, in short, turned its back for good on its bloody past. The Double Your Incomes policy was a deliberate ploy to draw public attention away from constitutional issues.In Hiroshima:
The citizens of Hiroshima were indeed victims, primarily of their own military rulers. But when a local group of peace activists petitioned the city of Hiroshima in 1987 to incorporate the history of Japanese aggression into the Peace Memorial Museum, the request was turned down. The petition for an Aggressors Corner was prompted by junior high school students from Osaka, who had embarrassed Peace Museum officials by asking for an explanation about Japanese responsibility for the war.
The history of the war, or indeed any history, is indeed not what the Hiroshima spirit is about. This is why Auschwitz is the only comparison that is officially condoned. Anything else is too controversial, too much part of the flow of history .In Nanking, by the governmental pseudo-historian Tanaka:
Unlike in Europe or China, writes Tanaka, you won t find one instance of planned, systematic murder in the entire history of Japan. This is because the Japanese have a different sense of values from the Chinese or the Westerners.In History on Trial:
In 1950, Becker wrote that few things have done more to hinder true historical self-knowledge in Germany than the war crimes trials. He stuck to this belief. Becker must be taken seriously, for he is not a right-wing apologist for the Nazi past, but an eminent liberal.
There never were any Japanese war crimes trials, nor is there a Japanese Ludwigsburg. This is partly because there was no exact equivalent of the Holocaust. Even though the behavior of Japanese troops was often barbarous, and the psychological consequences of State Shinto and emperor worship were frequently as hysterical as Nazism, Japanese atrocities were part of a military campaign, not a planned genocide of a people that included the country s own citizens. And besides, those aspects of the war that were most revolting and furthest removed from actual combat, such as the medical experiments on human guinea pigs (known as logs ) carried out by Unit 731 in Manchuria, were passed over during the Tokyo trial. The knowledge compiled by the doctors of Unit 731 of freezing experiments, injection of deadly diseases, vivisections, among other things was considered so valuable by the Americans in 1945 that the doctors responsible were allowed to go free in exchange for their data.
Some Japanese have suggested that they should have conducted their own war crimes trials. The historian Hata Ikuhiko thought the Japanese leaders should have been tried according to existing Japanese laws, either in military or in civil courts. The Japanese judges, he believed, might well have been more severe than the Allied tribunal in Tokyo. And the consequences would have been healthier. If found guilty, the spirits of the defendants would not have ended up being enshrined at Yasukuni. The Tokyo trial, he said, purified the crimes of the accused and turned them into martyrs. If they had been tried in domestic courts, there is a good chance the real criminals would have been flushed out.
After it was over, the Nippon Times pointed out the flaws of the trial, but added that the Japanese people must ponder over why it is that there has been such a discrepancy between what they thought and what the rest of the world accepted almost as common knowledge. This is at the root of the tragedy which Japan brought upon herself.
Emperor Hirohito was not Hitler; Hitler was no mere Shrine. But the lethal consequences of the emperor-worshipping system of irresponsibilities did emerge during the Tokyo trial. The savagery of Japanese troops was legitimized, if not driven, by an ideology that did not include a Final Solution but was as racialist as Hider s National Socialism. The Japanese were the Asian Herrenvolk, descended from the gods.
Emperor Hirohito, the shadowy figure who changed after the war from navy uniforms to gray suits, was not personally comparable to Hitler, but his psychological role was remarkably similar.
In fact, MacArthur behaved like a traditional Japanese strongman (and was admired for doing so by many Japanese), using the imperial symbol to enhance his own power. As a result, he hurt the chances of a working Japanese democracy and seriously distorted history. For to keep the emperor in place (he could at least have been made to resign), Hirohito s past had to be freed from any blemish; the symbol had to be, so to speak, cleansed from what had been done in its name.In Memorials, Museums, and Monuments:
If one disregards, for a moment, the differences in style between Shinto and Christianity, the Yasukuni Shrine, with its relics, its sacred ground, its bronze paeans to noble sacrifice, is not so very different from many European memorials after World War I. By and large, World War II memorials in Europe and the United States (though not the Soviet Union) no longer glorify the sacrifice of the fallen soldier. The sacrificial cult and the romantic elevation of war to a higher spiritual plane no longer seemed appropriate after Auschwitz. The Christian knight, bearing the cross of king and country, was not resurrected. But in Japan, where the war was still truly a war (not a Holocaust), and the symbolism still redolent of religious exultation, such shrines as Yasukuni still carry the torch of nineteenth-century nationalism. Hence the image of the nation owing its restoration to the sacrifice of fallen soldiers.In A Normal Country:
The mayor received a letter from a Shinto priest in which the priest pointed out that it was un-Japanese to demand any more moral responsibility from the emperor than he had already taken. Had the emperor not demonstrated his deep sorrow every year, on the anniversary of Japan s surrender? Besides, he wrote, it was wrong to have spoken about the emperor in such a manner, even as the entire nation was deeply worried about his health. Then he came to the main point: It is a common error among Christians and people with Western inclinations, including so-called intellectuals, to fail to grasp that Western societies and Japanese society are based on fundamentally different religious concepts . . . Forgetting this premise, they attempt to place a Western structure on a Japanese foundation. I think this kind of mistake explains the demand for the emperor to bear full responsibility.In Two Normal Towns:
The bust of the man caught my attention, but not because it was in any way unusual; such busts of prominent local figures can be seen everywhere in Japan. This one, however, was particularly grandiose. Smiling across the yard, with a look of deep satisfaction over his many achievements, was Hatazawa Kyoichi. His various functions and titles were inscribed below his bust. He had been an important provincial bureaucrat, a pillar of the sumo wrestling establishment, a member of various Olympic committees, and the recipient of some of the highest honors in Japan. The song engraved on the smooth stone was composed in praise of his rich life. There was just one small gap in Hatazawa s life story as related on his monument: the years from 1941 to 1945 were missing. Yet he had not been idle then, for he was the man in charge of labor at the Hanaoka mines.In Clearing Up the Ruins:
But the question in American minds was understandable: could one trust a nation whose official spokesmen still refused to admit that their country had been responsible for starting a war? In these Japanese evasions there was something of the petulant child, stamping its foot, shouting that it had done nothing wrong, because everybody did it.
Japan seems at times not so much a nation of twelve-year-olds, to repeat General MacArthur s phrase, as a nation of people longing to be twelve-year-olds, or even younger, to be at that golden age when everything was secure and responsibility and conformity were not yet required.
For General MacArthur was right: in 1945, the Japanese people were political children. Until then, they had been forced into a position of complete submission to a state run by authoritarian bureaucrats and military men, and to a religious cult whose high priest was also formally chief of the armed forces and supreme monarch of the empire.
I saw Jew S ss that same year, at a screening for students of the film academy in Berlin. This showing, too, was followed by a discussion. The students, mostly from western Germany, but some from the east, were in their early twenties. They were dressed in the international uniform of jeans, anoraks, and work shirts. The professor was a man in his forties, a 68er named Karsten Witte. He began the discussion by saying that he wanted the students to concentrate on the aesthetics of the film more than the story. To describe the propaganda, he said, would simply be banal: We all know the what, so let s talk about the how. I thought of my fellow students at the film school in Tokyo more than fifteen years before. How many of them knew the what of the Japanese war in Asia.
Kurt has trouble keeping his mouth shut. This became widely apparent
when he was expelled from Catholic school for telling a visiting
dignitary to go fuck himself.
WB used to preach angrily against casual sex.
Kurt enlisted in the Army, and due to his high IQ he ended up in the
Army Security Agency. After training, he was stationed in Germany
where he performed signals intelligence functions like direction
finding and passing on information to the CIA and NSA.
One day WB shagged a boy with a leather hat.
Contrary to what one might assume, Kurt had awareness of consequences.
He refused officer training because that would have extended his
commitment from 4 to 6 years. He purposefully flunked his French
language proficiency exam. He wanted there to be no chance of him
getting transferred to Vietnam.
The following day, WB found herself confronted and asked to explain
why she had had a change of heart about casual sex. Oh, it wasn't
casual sex, she explained. He came over and said, I've been dying
to make love with you for the past three hours, so it was special,
she clarified. Thus the nature of the past communication failure
became clear to everyone but WB.
Despite all his efforts to avoid Vietnam, Kurt, of course, had trouble
keeping his mouth shut. So in 1967 he pissed off the wrong person and
found himself having to choose between Leavenworth and Saigon. He
chose life of alcoholism over prison.
Next.
