The male anglerfish loses its digestive system as an adult. So, to stay alive, it seeks out a female and latches on with its teeth. It then secretes an enzyme that dissolves the flesh of its own mouth and the female’s body, fusing itself to the female permanently.

The male then, like some sort of sick Cheshire Cat, disappears, leaving only a pair of gonads. When the female releases eggs, they release sperm.

I love this from Wikipedia:

When scientists first started capturing ceratioid anglerfish, they noticed that all of the specimens were females. These individuals were a few inches in size and almost all of them had what appeared to be parasites attached to them. It turned out that these “parasites” were the remains of male ceratioids.

Analogies are at your own peril.

One of many ways, I’m sure.

In this case, our Internet connection went down. I sought out Mike, our IT guy.

“The tubes are clogged,” I said. That’s all I said.

“They are? OK.” He left, and a few minutes later had them Internets back up.

So a big deal is being made about a woman with muscular dystrophy who apparently resorted to crawling through the terminal to make a connecting flight because of the way she was treated by Delta.

From the Consumerist:

Julianna, who has muscular dystrophy, missed the connecting flight because nobody came with a wheelchair until 8:05—the same time the connecting flight took off. To make matters worse, the plane crew told Julianna she might make the flight anyway if she stopped waiting for help and got off the plane right now, so she crawled down the stairs on her own. When the wheelchair came she was “wheeled into a back room and advised” that her plane had taken off.

There’s more to it — Delta people couldn’t be found to get her from one part of the terminal to the other and so forth.

The employees in this room were debating who would get me to the ticket gate to be re-ticketed because it was no one’s job and the appropriate personnel were not responding to their calls. After that was resolved I was given a new boarding pass for a flight expected to leave at 12:55 AM. Then this person advised me she cannot get me from a D Gate to Gate A9. She again called for the appropriate personnel who never showed.

Of course the comments are pretty harsh against Delta for treating her that way.

But why is this Delta’s fault?

First, the Consumerist headline: “Delta Makes Woman With Muscular Dystrophy Crawl Off Plane.” That’s sensational, but not true. They didn’t make her do anything. They were waiting for a wheelchair and gave her the option to crawl. She could have waited.

It’s not as if she suddenly contracted this condition on the plane. She knew she had muscular dystrophy, she knew she required a wheelchair, and yet she didn’t make any provisions for having someone take her to her connecting flight? And, if she knew that it takes time to go from Point A to Point B — whether by wheeling or crawling — why schedule connecting flights so close together? (And it’s not as if crawling is such a big deal, really.)

Further, she’s upset that the Delta people couldn’t help her right away. But she didn’t tell them in advance that she was coming, and it’s not like these folks don’t have jobs to do. Maybe they couldn’t just drop everything to push Julianna around in a wheelchair. Sure, I realize that she needs help, and it would be nice if someone could give it to her, but it’s being a big hard on the Delta folks to complain that they didn’t rush to her aid. Maybe they couldn’t.

Look, folks, if you need assistance you also need to plan ahead for it. Relying on there being nice people at your destination to help you doesn’t really demonstrate great planning. And then complaining that you aren’t being catered to? A bit unfair, doncha think?

When I read tech blogs, I’m surprised at how often people assume that everyone else must have the same needs they do, and that the people they work with must be emblematic of the world in general.

Hint: What you want out of a piece of hardware or software isn’t necessarily what I want. For me, for example, customization of software is important. I like to streamline my apps so toolbars and menus are as uncluttered as possible. Here’s my Word toolbar, and it’s more cluttered than I’d prefer:

There are lots of software (and hardware) features that are crucial for you, but mean nothing to me. You want a music player that has a shuffle function, but I listen to audiobooks and need one with bookmarks. And so on.

So when I read things like this opening sentence from blah, blah! technology, I just shake my head:

IM (Instant Messaging) is for most people a vital part of their work flow.

It is? For most people? Really? Yes, I use IM at work, and I know many others who do. Most of them dabble with it, and it’s certainly not a “vital part of their work flow.” Of course, in some places it is crucial. And in others they don’t use it at all.

Sometimes you can justify a “most people” statement if it’s backed up by the facts. Most people could have, oh, three fonts installed on their computers and get along fine. (Try telling that to a graphic artist, though.)

But those cases are the minority. Do “most people” prefer to hit Ctrl-B to make text bold, or to click on the “B” icon? Do they buy a cell phone for its camera or not? Do they use instant messaging?

I don’t know. But it’s so darned common for people to assume that everyone’s like them.

PC Magazine still hasn’t gotten over its fondness for features. Back in the early ’90s, when I worked there, products got high marks for the number of features they had. And still the magazine gives a lot of credit to how many things a product does, instead of just how well it does it. Everyone likes lots of features, right?

Maybe not.

This is why software product development is so tough. You have to appeal to all sorts of different people. Does your keyboard need music controls? App-launch buttons? Lighted keys? Yes and no. Good luck trying to appeal to everyone; that’s why there are product lines.

So keep this in mind the next time you’re about to say or write, “Most people [want what I want].” Don’t assume.

Once again the whining about the federal deficit and debt has begun. The Washington Post is reporting that in 2009 it will a record $482 billion deficit, and that it’s a Bad Thing.

Hogwash.

The deficit and debt mean nothing. Nothing at all. The next president, some say, won’t be able to enact tax cuts or offer new programs? Bull. We’re paying for a $600 billion war without having the money, so why would anyone think we can’t pay for anything we like?

Don’t you get it? Government money means nothing. Need a few billion for a bank bailout? Sure! A few billion in disaster aid? Why not! Government spending doesn’t involve real money. When a multi-million-dollar military jet crashes, does that make a difference to anyone’s wallet? No!

The government can spend all it wants — pour billions into whatever programs or tax cuts it feels like — and not worry about the deficit or the debt. It doesn’t mean a thing.

We get upset when we hear about government waste not because it makes a difference, but because, well, because we like to complain about things. Would your life be any different if the Air Force bought fewer planes? No.

If the government saves money, you don’t get it. If the government wastes money, you don’t lose it. And everyone knows this.

All this talk about “Your children will have to pay it back” — what does that mean? It’s not like they’re going to get a bill for $60,000 or whatever their share of the debt is; it doesn’t work that way. It’s not real money.

Now, if having a huge deficit or debt actually impacted people, that’s something else. But it doesn’t. And people need to realize that. The spend-crazy Republicans have, as usual, driven the debt sky-high. The hand wringing begins, as if that will affect anyone’s life. It won’t.

It’s not as if the government has ever said, “Sorry, we don’t have the money for that.” We always do and always will. Whether it’s another trillion-dollar war, or a major disaster relief effort, or a bridge that needs to be rebuilt, or new security screeners at airports — we all know that the United States government will simply not be in a position to say, “Sorry, there’s no money for that.” History bears this out.

The only time we balk at spending money, it’s for philosophical reasons. We don’t want to provide health insurance for poor kids, for example. It’s not as if we can’t get (or print) the money to do these things. If we wanted to equip every soldier in Iraq with the best body armor money could buy, we could. The only thing stopping us is the ability of the manufacturers to turn the stuff out.

So stop whining about the debt. Whatever tax cuts or spending plans the next administration has, money won’t be an issue. We can buy whatever we want, and we always have.

The U.S. government isn’t a family with limited credit. A family can’t just up and buy a new Bentley; it runs the risks of A) not having enough credit, or B) having creditors call in the debt. Neither is true for the United States, except in what-if scenarios that aren’t rooted in reality. (China isn’t going to cripple the American economy by calling in our debt. It would destroy its economy. It will roll over the debt every time, like it always has.)

So enough whining about the deficit and the debt. What we should be complaining about is that we don’t spend more. We should be insuring poor kids. We should be paying teachers more. We should be fixing our roads. We have the money and we have the credit. So let’s do it.

Which company is more crucial to the Web we know today, Microsoft or Adobe?

Well, look at it this way: If Microsoft didn’t exist, all those folks with Web sites hosted on Windows server would have to migrate to Apache — which is where most of the Web is anyway. And we’d use Firefox instead of IE.

But if Adobe wasn’t here, there’s no Flash and no PDF.

Which do you encounter more often?

Just an early-morning thought. As you were.

PHP is a powerful scripting language, and incredibly popular on the Web (WordPress, which powers this and millions of other blogs, it itself written in PHP.) I had edited plenty of it, but now I finally wrote my first code from scratch.

It’s about as insignificant as you can get, aside from “Hello World,” but I’m pleased.

But making it made me realize why I can’t be a programmer. I’m way to fixated on the details.

This started because I found a joke site, Adrian Speyer’s “Convert American English to Canadian English” because I’m working on a story about working with immigrants, and made a joke in it about speaking Canadian.

Anyway, the site I found doesn’t do much more than add “eh?” to the end of whatever’s typed in, and turn some “er” words (theater) into “re” words (theatre). It’s a cute joke, but the execution is poor. Enter “This is a test” and you get “This is a test eh?” That’s OK, but it’s missing a comma. But enter “This is a test.” (with a period) and you get “This is a test. eh?” Messy.

And so I had to write my own, just because.

It had to do the same thing — as well as a few more things — but it had to work with large blocks of text, too. And with periods.

So I had to work to make mine — it’s at www.kantor.com/translate — better. For one, it adds “, eh” to the end of every sentence. But it also checks to see if the block of text ends in a period. If so, it inserts “, eh” before the period; if not, it adds it to the end.

The site I found also has another flaw. If you enter “This is a test.” and then hit Enter, you’ll end up with a blank space below, so the translator returns

This is a test.
eh?

No good. So mine has to strip any blanks, tabs, or returns from the end.

All of this is pretty simple (unless, like me, you know nothing of PHP), but I found myself getting caught up in all the details. What if someone put in text that already had an “eh” at the end? I didn’t want “eh eh,” so it had to filter it. And so on. Too many nitpicks, I think. If I was doing this for a living I’d drive myself bats.

In case you care, here’s the final code; it pulls the variable $text from the form on the page:

I grabbed a lot of word examples from Speyer’s code (’jewelry’ and ‘jewellery,’ for example.) My thanks to him.

Next I want to add a random generator so it doesn’t add “eh” to every sentence — just some….

I don’t understand why people think certain features make their Web pages better or more appealing, when all they really do is annoy the %$#^&* out of visitors.

I know I’m going to revisit this topic as soon as I come across another of those things that drive me crazy, but here are three.

1. Highlighting every search term you used to find the page. For example, if I Google “how do I change my oil,” there are some sites that will highlight every instance of each of those words, often in different colors. That makes it incredibly annoying to read. I get the idea, but there’s gotta be an off switch. (And I have no idea what Matt Roggott and Brian Suda were drinking when they wrote “Enhance Usability by Highlighting Search Terms” for A List Apart.)

2. Too many darned links. It makes sense to link to major terms, and certainly to Web pages that you reference, but some pages — I notice this frequently with news sites — link dozens of words even if they have nothing to with the story. Usually these are company names that link to the company home pages (not very useful) or stock price (ditto), but sometimes it’s worse. Some will links any term that corresponds to a section on the site. So every occurrence of the word “software” will link to the software category.

Wikipedia can get nuts like this too, with links to every conceivable page. “John Doe was the manager of a grocery store on a side street in downtown Atlanta during the opening weeks of World War II.” It’s one thing to link to significant entries, but to words that just have a definition (a la “week”)? Come on.

3. Gray body text. Why? Why? Are you trying to save ink by not using black? Does gray make the page more readable? No, in fact the opposite. Lower contrast just makes it harder to see. Is it a style thing? If so, it’s a stupid one.

4. Rollover ads. You know these things — highlighted text that pops up a small ad if you dare to accidentally roll your mouse over one. Companies pay to be linked to certain terms; maybe you would roll over the word “audio” and — bam! — up comes an ad for iTunes or whatever. Incredibly, incredibly annoying. Luckily there are Firefox extensions to shut that off, but still. Come on, guys.

More to come, I’m certain.

Right-wing extremist and columnist Robert Novak is in a spot of trouble. You might remember Novak — he gave the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to our enemies because he didn’t like her husband.

Seems Novak, known around Washington as an “aggressive driver” (read: jerk), hit a pedestrian. The pedestrian, described as a “male in his 60s,” slammed against Novak’s windshield before falling off. Novak sped away, and only stopped when a bicyclist moved in front of his car and prevented Novak from going further.

My favorite part, though: Novak claimed he didn’t realize he had hit anyone.

The man bounced off his windshield, and Novak says he didn’t notice this. Maybe I’m a bit more observant than most folks, because if a man slammed into my windshield while I was driving, I think I’d be aware of it.

Ergo, either Novak is inattentive or has a medical condition that prevents him from seeing what’s on the road, or he’s an out and out liar. There aren’t any other options.

Aiee! Accidental Twittering! “That’s never happened to me before.”

PHP can do ANYTHING. Really. I’m learning to love it, and I’m barely a novice.

Seen Dr. Horrible yet? Worth it just for Felicia Day. (Don’t she just wanna make you become a stalker? In a good way, of course.)

Kroger brand diet cola is Diet Coke repackaged. Food Lion’s brand is… something else.

It’s gross, sure, but when your sinuses are killing you for a week, a neti pot really does help.

My father is, finally, going to get broadband, and that got me thinking about life-altering technologies.

I don’t mean the major things like the printing press or the Internet — I’m thinking more of consumer-level stuff that, once you get it, you can’t imagine living without it.

Granted, these will differ from person to person, but the ones I’m thinking of seem to resonate with a lot of folks. Another common denominator: You don’t know that you want it until you have it. Then you feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle to convince other people what they’ve been missing.

I can think of four off-hand, but one is a bit iffy because it’s too big:

1. The mouse wheel. When they first debuted, I remember Gus Venditto, who worked with me at Internet World, classify the wheel mouse as one of the biggest tech innovations of the year. And I thought, “It’s just a neat addition to a mouse.” Boy, was I wrong. For a while I had to convince people that mice without wheels were worthless. Now, of course, you can’t buy one without one. (Many have side-to-side scrolling, too, but that’s aimed mostly at spreadsheet users.)

2. Broadband Internet. I was living in Maplewood, N.J., when the cable company called to try to sell me on broadband, which it was offering for the first time. I didn’t let the gal finish. “Yes!” I shouted. “When can you come?” But most people still used modems at home, and it took some convincing that broadband was about more than pictures loading faster. The important thing was that it was always on — no waiting to dial and handshake. I hope my father sees the light soon.

3. TiVo (and DVRs in general). If you don’t have one, you don’t understand how incredible a digital video recorder is. You just don’t. My brother tried to convince me that it was great, but I wasn’t a big videotaper anyway, so I didn’t believe him. Then I got it, and everything changed. Not just pausing a show, and not just fast-forwarding through commercials — a TiVo changes the way you watch television. It doesn’t matter nearly as much what time it is now. Your favorite shows are waiting for you. You never have to worry about not setting the VCR properly and losing the last five minutes of the game. Heck, you don’t have to worry about setting anything.

I wonder if Touch-Tone® phones were the same way when they came out. I remember when we got one, but I was young enough that it didn’t change my calling all that much. I suspect teenagers were a bit more excited.

And maybe Macs are the same way — maybe if I had one I would say, “Oh, sheesh! Now I get it!” Could be. (But it’s a bit expensive to find out; it’s not a $20 mouse or a $100 TiVo.)

Anyone else have any “personal life-changing tech” thoughts?

@lindsaydurango Bake as in “make cookies” or as in “get a tan” or as in “get drunk”?

Waiting in line, or just peeing their pants when the Apple stores opened? You decide.

(Click to enlarge.)

Questions raised about Iranian missile-test photo.

Who is Sarak Stelmok and why does she keep following me? :)

I would not have been at all surprised to find that the Bush administration tried to suppress NASA scientists who were writing about climate change. They have a long and storied history of being vehemently anti-science. But the official NASA report on the issue is a bit more complicated.

From the executive summary:

Our investigation found that during the fall of 2004 through early 2006, the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public through those particular media over which the Office of Public Affairs had control (i.e., news releases and media access).

A-ha! you say — just as I thought! (In fact, that was exactly what I thought as I read that.) But then you go a bit further:

We also concluded that the climate change editorial decisions were localized within the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs; we found no credible evidence suggesting that senior NASA or Administration officials directed the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs to minimize information relating to climate change.

So that’s a little better. Whether the OPA officials tried to suppress that information because it went against their personal views, or because they thought they were doing the administration a favor, or because they thought it helped their career paths… well, we may never know.

I hope, though, that the people who did that aren’t able to work in any kind of science-related field. Maybe the yokels at the creationism museum are hiring.