9. 2006 September

9.1 Monday, September 3

1. An American Haunting: The Bell Witch. By Brent Monahan. [192]

9.2 Thursday, September 7

The United States government now admits that it runs secret prisons which violate the rights of people. When you imprison someone, you are stealing their life. And in these cases, where there is no visibility & that civil rights are denied, you are commiting further crimes. Hell, you're even lying to the American people (& the rest of the world) about it. (Apparently, only the American people believe the lies. Everyone else sees through them.)

I'm amazed that they are trying to spin these prisons into a kind of public service. Maybe I'm not amazed. We already know that the American government warps perceptions by bending definitions & mincing words.

What remains to be seen is whether the American people buy the lies, drink the cool-aide.

Whether or not you realize that the prisons are contemptible violations of sacred rights, remember: The government itself admitted yesterday that the government has lied about these prisons.

1. ``Bush says secret CIA jails necessary and effective tools. By L. Daleel.
2. ``Bush Says Terror Plots Uncovered''. By Deb Riechmann. Forbes.

3. ``Use of secret jails draws mixed reaction''. By Rohan Sullivan.

Remember the facts:

• The government has for years denied that these prisons exist.

• The government admitted yesterday that the prisons exist. So the government was lying when it denied their existence.

• The prisoners in the secret prisons are denied due process. So the prisons violate their rights.

• You can't say ``they are terrorists so they deserve to have their rights violated''. None of them have been charged, much less tried, so they are not legally criminals. What's more, everyone has a right to due process, whether or not they are guilty.

9.3 Thursday, September 7

1. ``Ray tracing soon to go real-time for 3D rendering''. By Jon Hannibal Stokes. Ars Technica.

2. ``A Great Leap in Graphics''. By W. Wayt Gibbs. Scientific American.

9.4 Wednesday, September 13

1. ``Media Control''. By Noam Chomsky. [43]

9.5 Friday, September 15

9.5.1 Ludicrous

I swear to almighty god^9.1 that, just moments ago & in a story about President Bush's secret torture programs, I heard the reporter on National Public Radio say ``The president has threatened to end the secret interrogation program if Congress does not give it legal standing''.

I hope (again to almighty god) that this is both the most ludicrous & backward claim I will hear in my life. Think about it. Someone threatens to stop doing something Congress doesn't legalize it. Riiiiight.

9.6 Thursday, September 21

1. I was re-reading Alexandrescu's Modern C++ Design [8] & wondered if a custom allocator as complex as the one in the book could possibly be worthwhile. There are surprisingly few studies of custom memory allocator performance (or at least I was surprisingly unlucky in finding them on the web), but Berger, Zorn, & McKinley's ``Reconsidering custom memory allocation'' [29] concludes that most custom memory allocators are not worth the while. It does not mention Alexandrescu's custom allocator specifically.

2. ``Myths and realities: the performance impact of garbage collection'' [34]