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That's just A-D. For E-Z, with the links to the videos, visit Mr. Bali Hai's blog, Eye of the Goof. Link
I just got this batshit crazy letter in the mail. It contained a poster of Jesus with his eyes closed, and it was labeled prayer rug. Whith it were instructions that I should kneel on the rug and stare at Jesus untill his eyes opened, then I was to say something along the lines "Jesus, send me money" and sleep with the "rug" under my bed for one night. The following day I was supposed to send the rug back in a prepaid envelope as well as check off everything I wanted from a pre-printed prayer list, then open a sealed "prophecy" that they also mailed me.
"Polyfuckery is like serial monogamy on steroids."
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} neery the idea of a bandom flashfic comm came up (as in "Wouldn't it be great?" "Totally! But I wouldn't want to organize it." "Yeah, me neither.")I saw that thread and thought, hm, is it really that much work? (And I totally get that even not that much work can be too much, if it is the wrong kind of work or you have too much to do anyway.) In my opinion it would probably entail (reposting from my comment in that thread) - posting new challenges in regular intervals - coming up with new challenges (but there the community members would probably be helpful and one could always ask other comms whether one can use one of their challenges) - archiving the challenge answers through tags and memories - maybe deleting/banning spam/trolls I could see myself doing that, and one could probably find people who'd be willing to help with that. So, that isn't really the dilemma - but neery has also spoken about this with other people who might be interested in doing that. If I decided that I want to start such a community, should I try to check first whether that'd be ok with them? (Or whether they'd be interested to do it together, also a possibilty of course...)ETA: There is also the question whether it would make sense to start something like that as a virtual noone in fandom. Would people even participate?
( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )
When idly scratching one's belly during sleep, it is best not to get a fingernail snagged in a surgical staple.
Sen. Teddy Kennedy (D-MA) rushed to hospital in Boston ... "symptoms of a stroke". Breaking Update: Kennedy reportedly fell ill in Hyannisport and was first taken to a local hospital before being airlifted to Boston. Further Update: More from the AP wire.
Sen. Teddy Kennedy (D-MA) rushed to hospital in Boston ... "symptoms of a stroke". Breaking Update: Kennedy reportedly fell ill in Hyannisport and was first taken to a local hospital before being airlifted to Boston. Further Update: More from the AP wire.
Just look at the headline and first paragraph of a KPIX-TV commissioned poll through SurveyUSA: “California State Senate District 3: Carole Migden Defeated 2:1 in Primary Challenge -- In a Democratic Primary today in California's 3rd State Senate District, 18 days until votes are counted, incumbent Senator Carole Migden is defeated in her bid to keep her party's nomination… Mark Leno, assemblyman from California's 13th assembly district, gets 42% of the vote; Joe Nation, former assemblyman from CA's 6th district, gets 22%; Migden finishes effectively tied with Nation, at 21%. Leno leads in almost every demographic sub-population.” It doesn’t get any better for Migden or Nation throughout this survey—in favorable-unfavorable ratings and the results by various subgroups to the extent the poll is accurate as to the smaller samples of those in the subgroups. Overall, this survey of 1000 voters out of which 516 were determined to have already voted or to be likely voters, has a margin of error of 3.2% as to the favorable/unfavorable ratings and 4.4% as to who voters would vote for. The poll is fresh—from last Tuesday May 13 to Wednesday May 14. It was released Thursday. Leno has by far the best favorability rating—34% to 16% overall and a whopping 48% to 10% favorable rating amongst those who the survey determined had already voted and a 44% to 11% favorability advantage with those who are likely voters. Nation has a 23% to 15% favorability rating and this is 35% to 24% with those already voted and 23% to 15% with those who are deemed likely to vote. Migden has a 34% to 17% unfavorable rating and her negatives with those who have already voteed—38% to 25%--and likely voters—33% to 20% parallel this.
Management company dropped off a 24 hour notice so instead of going to my friends' graduation/party, I get to move things around so the workers can get in to each area. Since they haven't told me what areas they'll be working on, it means I get to mess my place up. Oh, whee. Hopefully this place will start to look nice in a few weeks? It's an excuse to get the paperwork in boxes cleared up, too.
1064. V. good. Very, very nearly king. w00t w00t.
I have a challenge for my flist and anyone else reading. Derren Brown is this cool guy from the UK who uses psychology and NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) to shake people up, show them some of the power of the mind, shock them a bit. But he's really cool. My gf showed me one of his "trick or treat" eps and it really made a positive impact on me.
Link to tour schedule
The race to develop and market environmentally friendly cars is getting fiercer. As the price of gasoline hits record heights and people are becoming more concerned about global warming, car companies are increasingly investing in ‘greener’ cars. One car manufacturer showing a massive commitment to alternative vehicles is the Nissan Motor Company that has been in the news several times within the last week. On Tuesday, Japan’s No.3 car manufacturer confirmed its plans to launch an all-electric car in the U.S. and Japan by 2010. The New York Times called Nissan’s move “the first by a major automaker to bring a zero-emission vehicle to the American market.” Nissan also envisions having a broad range of electric vehicles in the future and wants to be the world leader in zero-emissions vehicles. The day before the company announced its green plans for the U.S., it said it will be heading into India, too. Nissan announced together with French Renault and Indian Bajaj Auto that the companies will form a joint-venture to develop, produce and market a low-cost, energy efficient car targeted at the growing Indian market. The wholesale price of the low-cost car, called ULC, will start from $2,500. The ULC will be manufactured at a new plant, with a capacity of 400,000 units per year, to be constructed in Chakan, India. The sales are to start in early 2011. Last weekend, the Silicon Valley electric car startup Project Better Place said that Renault-Nissan, which is its partner, would likely spend between $500 million and $1 billion on building electric cars. Renault is building the cars and Nissan, via an agreement with NEC Corp., is supplying the swappable lithium-ion batteries for them. A lot of green vehicle plans for Nissan. “We are convinced that the mass availability of affordable zero-emission vehicles is the most significant breakthrough our industry could deliver, and, together with Renault, Nissan intends to be the breakthrough leader,” said Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn according to a company press release. Nissan hopes the eco-shift towards cleaner cars will deliver it some market share in a time when the company is expecting a sharp fall in annual profits this year due to a weak dollar, rising commodity prices and sinking U.S. demand. The company did start to profile itself as an SUV specialist just as those vehicles started to go out of fashion, The Independent writes. So moving to greener cars could please its consumers, as well as its shareholders. At least the example of Toyota’s Prius hybrid cars is encouraging. And the technology is slowly getting better, as companies work on innovations to address the current challenges of electric vehicles, like the small range and tough battery technology. The tricky part part will be betting on the right technology and making the right partnerships.        
As a result of some Language Log posts a couple of years ago, I get quite a few inquiries from journalists about Dr. Leonard Sax and his science-based arguments for single-sex education. It's in the nature of things that only a small fraction of such discussions wind up in the resulting articles. For example, for Elizabeth Weil's NYT Magazine piece ("Teaching Boys and Girls Separately", 3/2/2008), I wound up sending about 4,000 words worth of emails to the author and her fact-checker, in response to their questions about specific points raised in some of Dr. Sax's writings. In the final article, this all wound up as background to a 250-word passage about sex differences in hearing. (See "Scupulously avoiding sigma", 3/2/2008, for some comments about other aspects of the article.) I'm not complaining; Ms. Weil had a lot of material to cover, and she didn't have a lot of space to work with. However, another recent journalist's inquiry, raising some of the same issues, inspired me start a new policy. From now on, when I get inquiries from journalists, I'll try to post an edited version of my responses on Language Log. This may be of interest to some readers — and of course our famous money-back guarantee is available to the rest of you — and it will also make it easier for me to deal with subsequent questions about the same issues. In this case, I'll start with my responses to the four new questions that arrived yesterday afternoon. The answer to the last one brings up some of those emails sent to Elizabeth Weil, which I'll post in an edited form later this weekend.
1. I've read a few posts on Language Log, but please tell me more about what you think about Dr. Sax's arguments about sex-based differences in the brain?</p> In his books, Leonard Sax is a political activist using science to make a case, not a scientist evaluating a hypothesis. Science is sometimes on his side, sometimes neutral or equivocal, and sometimes against him. He picks the results that fit his agenda, ignoring those that don't; and all too often, he misunderstands, exaggerates or misrepresents the results that he presents. There's detailed support for these assertions in some Language Log posts from 2006: "David Brooks, cognitive neuroscientist" (6/12/2006) This doesn't mean that his conclusions are false, but it does mean that his appeals to science are not trustworthy. 2. Speaking as a linguistics professor, why do you think girls have better verbal skills than boys? </p> This question assumes that girls have better verbal skills than boys. In fact, that generalization is somewhere between misleading and false. And you don't have to be a linguistics professor to figure this out — you just need to look at the published numbers from tests related to verbal skills, with a little bit of basic statistics to see what they mean. I encourage you to look into it for yourself — some references are below — but here's a summary of what (I think) it all means in practical terms. If you pick a hundred girls and a hundred boys at random, and give them a battery of standardized tests measuring various sorts of verbal abilities, and split the group into upper and lower halves based on the results, the highest-scoring hundred kids will probably include about 52 girls and 48 boys, while the lower-scoring hundred kids will be about 48 girls and 52 boys. (This is based on the 0.10 effect size that is calculated for studies since 1973 in the Shibley & Linn meta-analysis, cited below. The details will vary quite a bit, depending on what tests you use, and what population of girls and boys you sample from — for some tests and some populations, the top half is likely to have more boys in it than girls.) This is a difference, but it's not a very big one. The effects are small, complex, and variable over time and social setting. In my opinion, the causes remain uncertain. According to Janet Shibley Hyde and Marcia C. Linn, "Gender Differences in Verbal Ability: A Meta-Analysis", Psychological Bulletin, 104:1 53-69 (1988): Many regard gender differences in verbal ability to be one of the well-established findings in psychology. To reassess this belief, we located 165 studies that reported data on gender differences in verbal ability. The weighted mean effect size (d) was +0.11, indicating a slight female superiority in performance. The difference is so small that we argue that gender differences in verbal ability no longer exist. Analyses of effect sizes for different measures of verbal ability showed almost all to be small in magnitude: for vocabulary, d = 0.02; for analogies, d = −0.16 (slight male superiority in performance); for reading comprehension, d = 0.03; for speech production, d = 0.33 (the largest effect size); for essay writing, d = 0.09; for anagrams, d = 0.22; and for tests of general verbal ability, d = 0.20. For the 1985 administration of the Scholastic Aptitude Test-Verbal, d = −0.11, indicating superior male performance. Analysis of tests requiring different cognitive processes involved in verbal ability yielded no evidence of substantial gender differences in any aspect of processing. Similarly, an analysis by age indicated no striking changes in the magnitude of gender differences at different ages, countering Maccoby and Jacklin's (1974) conclusion that gender differences in verbal ability emerge around age 11. For studies published in 1973 or earlier, d = 0.23 and for studies published after 1973, d = 0.10, indicating a slight decline in the magnitude of the gender difference in recent years. [At this point, the reader obviously needs to understand what "effect size" means. It's a measure of between-group differences, expressed in terms of the amount of within-group variation; and the usual qualitative interpretation is that 0.2 is a small effect size, 0.5 is a moderate effect size, and 0.8 or larger is a large effect size. In more technical language, this is "Cohen's d", the difference in means divided by the pooled standard deviation. For more discussion of the concept, try my post "Gabby guys: the effect size" (9/23/2006) or the Wikipedia article. For a discussion of why it matters that most citizens (even intellectuals) have no clue about any of this, see "The Pirahã and us" (10/6/2007).] A more recent meta-analysis gave a table of 124 quantitative estimates of sex-difference effect sizes, taken from 46 published meta-analyses of gender differences in general (Janet Shibley Hyde, "The Gender Similarities Hypothesis", American Psychologist, 60(6): 581-592, 2005) . These deal with many different cognitive and behavioral measures, from "mathematics computation" to "job attribute preference". Pulling out those that compared verbal skills, we get:
The asterisks indicate that "data were from major, large national samples". Positive values of d represent higher scores for females, negative values indicate higher scores for males (I've switched the sign compared to Table 1 in the source, in order to make the sign consistent with the practice in Hyde & Linn above.). Although 7 of the 8 meta-analyses show an advantage for females, only three of those are non-negligible in magnitude. And the biggest effect sizes — 0.45 and 0.40 from the Feingold [1988] study — are worth looking into a little further. That study is Alan Feingold, "Cognitive Gender Differences Are Disappearing", American Psychologist 43(2) 95:103, 1988. Its abstract: Gender differences in cognitive abilities were determined using the norms from the four standardizations of the Differential Aptitude Tests conducted between 1947 and 1980, and from the four standardizations of the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test/Scholastic Aptitude Test conducted between 1960 and 1983. The standardized gender differences (ds) were averaged over grade of examinees and year of standardization to obtain a mean effect size for each ability, and variations among effect sizes were examined for grade, year, and Grade × Year trends. Girls scored higher than boys on scales of grammar, spelling, and perceptual speed; boys had higher means on measures of spatial visualization, high school mathematics, and mechanical aptitude; and no average gender differences were found on tests of verbal reasoning, arithmetic, and figural reasoning. Gender differences declined precipitously over the years surveyed, and the increases in these differences over the high school grades have diminished. The important exception to the rule of vanishing gender differences is that the well-documented gender gap at the upper levels of performance on high school mathematics has remained constant over the past 27 years. Here are some relevant numbers from Feingold's paper, dealing with SAT verbal scores from 1960 to 1983. Again, the values are effect sizes, with positive values indicating that girls' average scores were higher, and negative values indicating that boys' average scores were higher. The most important thing is that all the effect sizes are small; but it's also interesting to look at the trend:
There are many interesting scientific questions about where measured sex differences (and other group differences) in verbal abilities come from. But it's just not true that sex differences in verbal skills are large enough to be an argument for sex-segregated education. 3. What do you think is the reason for the widening gender gap in American schools? Are single-sex schools the answer? </p> The short answer to both questions is that I don't know. But my impression is that the main overall trend is for girls and women to do better rather than for boys and men to do worse; that this is a world-wide effect, which is unlikely to be the result of U.S.-specific educational or social developments over the past few decades.; and that the causes are almost certainly not sex differences in perceptual or cognitive skills or styles. Educational trends in the Arab world provide a striking case study. In response to my discussion of David Brooks' channeling of Leonard Sax ("David Brooks, Cognitive Neuroscientist", 6/12/2006), Lameen Souag wrote I wonder how Brooks would account for similar phenomena elsewhere, such as Qatar, where men's dropout rates are higher than women's even at primary school and more than twice as many women as men attend university, or Algeria, where 20% more women than men make it to the baccalaureate, or Kuwait, where two-thirds of university students are women. Learning styles yes - sitting down in one place and paying attention all day is a sore trial for most boys - but there's surely something broader going on here than choice of violence-filled vs. touchy-feely literature, never mind his further inferences about brains. Qatar: http://lughat.blogspot.com/2006/04/more-f As far as I can tell, most if not all schools in Qatar continue to be segregated by sex (see this Rand report, which says that "Three levels of general education are provided: primary (grades 1-6), preparatory (grades 7-9), and secondary (grades 10-12), with girls and boys in separate schools.") I'm not sure whether Algerian schools are single-sex or not. The cited link suggests that university classes have been segregated by sex in Kuwait since 1996, and I presume that elementary and secondary school are sex-segregated there as well. The educational "gender gap" is clearly a serious issue, one that deserves careful study and attention. Leonard Sax has argued forcefully that it results from large differences between the sexes in many perceptual, cognitive and behavioral dimensions: "Girls and boys play differently. They learn differently. They fight differently. They see the world differently. They hear differently." But I've argued that Dr. Sax's account of sex differences in sight and hearing, at least, is highly exaggerated. And there are many studies suggesting that the most important factors in this area are not perceptual or cognitive at all. Thus Brian A. Jacob, "Where the boys aren't: non-cognitive skills, returns to school and the gender gap in higher education", Economics of Education Review 21(6) 589-598, 2002: Nearly 60 percent of college students today are women. Using longitudinal data on a nationally representative cohort of eighth grade students in 1988, I examine two potential explanations for the differential attendance rates of men and women—returns to schooling and non-cognitive skills. […] I find that higher non-cognitive skills and college premiums among women account for nearly 90 percent of the gender gap in higher education. Interestingly, non-cognitive factors continue to influence college enrollment after controlling for high school achievement. It's also important to stay clear on where there are gaps and where there aren't, and what the trends really are. Thus Muna Husain and Daniel L. Millimet, "The Mythical 'Boy Crisis'?", Economics of Education Review, in press, 2008: The popular press has put forth the idea that the US educational system is experiencing a “Boy Crisis,” where boys are losing ground to girls across multiple dimensions. Here, we analyze these claims in the context of math and reading achievement during early primary school. We reach two conclusions. First, white boys outperform white girls in math across virtually the entire distribution by the end of third grade; there is less evidence for other races. Second, boys lag behind girls in reading at the start of kindergarten and at the end of third grade across all races, but only the lowest-achieving boys lose ground over the first four years; boys gain ground between first and third grades. 4. Dr. Sax posted on his Web site that he has sent you rebuttals to your Language Log posts but you have yet to respond. He has also posted these letters on his Web site. Would you like to address this?</p> From the page "About Leonard Sax MD PhD" at the web site of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education: Mark Liberman, at the University of Pennsylvania, has posted several blogs attacking Dr. Sax's positions regarding sex differences in hearing and vision. Dr. Sax has replied directly to Professor Liberman (via snail mail). Having received no response from Professor Liberman, Dr. Sax has agreed to post these letters online. Click here to read Dr. Sax's letter regarding sex differences in hearing; My blog posts from 2006 criticized Dr. Sax for exaggerating, misunderstanding or misrepresenting sex differences described in scientific studies of hearing and vision. In these letters, originally sent to me a few months ago in paper form, he counters mainly by citing other studies. This doesn't affect my original complaint of exaggeration, misunderstanding and misrepresentation. And I've been hoping to avoid a protracted controversy about points that I don't believe are very much in doubt. However, I've read the additional references that he brings forward in these letters — that's mostly what those 4,000 words of email to Elizabeth Weil and her fact checker were about — and I'll post something about them later this weekend. [I've left comments off for this post. However, feel free to send me email on the subject, and I'll add updates or corrections as appropriate. And after I've posted my response to Dr. Sax's letters, I'll set up an open thread on the subject for those who want to register their opinions, suggestions, anecdotes, and so forth.]
This Saturday and Sunday I’ll be participating in Silicon Valley Open Studios at 1733 Hudson Drive, San Jose, CA. 11am-5pm each day. Drop by if you get a chance!
Plenty of my gay and lesbian friends have mixed feelings about marriage being the centerpiece of the gay rights movement, especially as it crowds out everything else. I can understand that, but nonetheless it is in both real and symbolic terms an important step in making gays and lesbians equal under the law. Newsom's actions were derided by many at the time as just a stunt. Perhaps it was. But it ultimately led to this week's ruling. Hopefully California voters don't bring on the stupid in November and change their constitution. In 25 years this will all seem so stupid. 
Last night, Mary's car slipped a belt. We called AAA and
This is just a whine.
One more in series of brief interviews conducted at this week's AAPOR Conference, this one with Chase Harrison, preceptor in survey research at Harvard University. Harrison describes his analysis of the accuracy of pre-election polls during the 2008 primaries.
In the Democratic weekly radio address, Assemblymember John Laird argues that the Governor’s budget proposal unfairly hurts struggling Californians. So, we look forward to working with our Republican counterparts to find funding solutions for our schools, healthcare and other important services while also closing our budget gap.
The June 2008 Ballot has a dangerous measure known as Proposition 98 (California Property Owners and Farmland Protection Act, or CPOFPA). If passed by the voters, Prop. 98 would terminate rent control, tenant protections, and would place homeowners at risk by allowing unscrupulous property owners to challenge existing building codes and zoning laws that may prohibit the placing of a “pig sty” next to someone’s home, or a “porn shop” next to a church or school. There are only two state ballot measures coming up in June, one known as Prop. 98 and the other as Prop. 99. Both competing measures are meant to prevent government from taking private property for other private use, and are in response to a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows the government to take private property and turn it over to another private interest for economic development. Activists across the state, say that Prop. 98 is bad, and Prop. 99 is good. Prop. 98 is also a stealth measure that guts protections for land, air, water, species and natural resources, according to a legal analysis by the environmental law firm of Shute, Mihaly and Weinberger. “That is a big resounding no on Prop. 98,” says low-income Oakland renter Rodney Younger. “I am an African-American parent with a son and a daughter to protect, and Prop. 98 takes away our rights to defend our housing if it passes.” On April 25, the Apartment Owner’s Association (AOA) of California held a seminar at Oakland’s Hilton Hotel, which included Eviction Workshops, to teach local landlords how to evict their tenants. Just Cause Oakland joined others to hold a morning protest in front of the Hilton Hotel, to greet the landlords who showed up for the Eviction Workshops being conducted by the AOA. According to Lauren Wheeler of Just Cause Oakland, “Close to 80 people showed up to protest against the AOA event, that teaches landlords how to evict tenants.” “We wanted to let them know that we will not let them end renter’s protections which would occur if Prop. 98 passes. We had to let the AOA members know that Prop. 98 would result in the eviction of thousands of Oakland renters, and that people should vote no on Prop. 98, and yes on Prop. 99 to save renters protections in California,” said Wheeler.
Ignored by the mainstream media this Wednesday, the Fair Political Practices Commission complaint filed against "Valley Democrats for Change" by attorney, Nicole Kuklok-Waldman, is heating up the race in the 40th Assembly District. It entered cyberspace Thursday through the subscription only Capitol Morning Report.
The NYT is sounding the alarm because the number of engineering students in Japan has fallen by approximately 10 percent over the last decade. Apparently students are turning to other higher paying or more exciting occupations. The big question that readers of this article should ask is: "what is the problem?" Japan's overall population is declining very modestly and its workforce will soon be declining somewhat more rapidly, so it would not be surprising if the number of engineers in Japan also fell. Furthermore, the article never providing the most basic information that would indicate the extent of any shortage: what is happening to engineers' wages? If there is a shortage of engineers in Japan, then we would expect rapid increases in their wages. The article does not tell us anything about engineers' wages except that they are lower than for doctors and for people in finance. Without information on wage growth there is no way to assess the extent to which a shortage of engineers might actually be creating a problem for Japan's economy. --Dean Baker
Complex causes of violence and war... Does Rome’s fate await us?... Our dire need for an energy revolution... How global connectivity can endanger us all... Why survivalism isn’t the answer to the threat of crisis...
Yet another in series of brief interviews conducted at this week's AAPOR Conference, this one with Jeff Jones, managing editor of the Gallup Poll. Jones presented findings on the interviews Gallup has conducted by cell phone with Americans living in households with non landline phone service to supplement national surveys and polls conducted in four primary states. Starting just after 2:00 on the video, Jones discusses the impact of those additional interviews on the general election matchups between the two Democratic contenders and John McCain. While the inclusion of cell phone only households makes little difference in the Clinton-McCain contest, it benefits Obama by a net four points: Without cell phone interviews, and weighted using Gallup's usual likely voter model, McCain would get 49% to Obama's 46% (clarification: this result combines six Gallup/USAToday surveys conducted so far during 2008). With the cell-phone interviews included, the result is Obama 48%, McCain 47%. And don't miss the cameo appearance by ABC polling director Gary Langer.
... when it starts with you waking up in a good mood, knowing that it is the first day of a three day weekend, the weather is nice and then, when you're on your way to the farmer market, an old man stops you and you take out your earplugs thinking he might want to know some directions and he then proceeds to tell you how completely, totally, utterly beautiful and gorgeous you are.
Necessarily.
The stunning new Bush administration report, 20% Wind Energy by 2030 (discussed here), convinced me it was time to write a long piece, which has just been published in Salon. The article–”Winds of change: The U.S. can greatly boost clean wind power for 2 cents a day. Now all we need is a president who won’t blow the chance.“– explains the more than 2,000-year history of wind power, how conservatives cost America the chance to be the world wind leader, and why the global industry is so successful in spite of our government’s relative apathy:
Surprisingly, the top state for wind farms is no longer California as of 2006:
We just got into the hostel at Galway. It looks like a very cute city.
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The heat is screwing up my connectivity. I can't use the desktop at all, and the laptop only during the late night and early morning. So email is unwontedly slow, and I am waaaaay behind on comments and answering things.
I think I want to find a local horse rescue to volunteer at... do socializing. Anyone know of one?
The message I got the other day via the Contact link was very well-timed:
Another keyboard post -- Goldie'll probably never see it, even if I say stuff about her later in the post? Hopefully the text of the Contact page was something Jamiel read since although I am giving the note my attention, I'm not directly responding to it except via this blog you are reading now. :-) I'll tell a story to provide some context. The very first build of MSKLC I let them try out was missing the most commonly used feature -- loading an existing layout and modifying it. As I mentioned way back in January 2005 in Accessibility, Internationalization, and Keyboards (#3: MSKLC's UI), while talking about the backasswards development process of the tool in general and this feature in particular:
This particular feature is one I pushed bask on, hard. Because even before I knew how much work it would truly be, I knew it would be a lot of work. It just didn't seem to be worthwhile. But then, over the weekend (the D&P was on Friday), I tried to build a keyboard. I felt a bit like Stan and Kyle in that South Park episode (A Very Crappy Christmas) where they were creating a cartoon using the same techniques that Matt and Trey originally used for the shorts before the show. You know, excited when the first key was done, and then as each successive keystroke was assigned and I realized what a huge horking pain in the ass creating a keyboard from scratch could really be, I just got more and more annoyed. By the eighth key, I was ready to rethink the whole idea of no "load an existing layout" functionality.... By the eleventh, I stopped creating the keyboard and started prototyping this new feature. So now, thinking about Jamiel's message, I realized the process he had to be using to build the Dvorak keyboard. He was changing the assignment of very single key and every shift state! Yikes. There was no way that this was fun. :-( Let's take a step back here to solve this problem, though. I mean, after all, there is a Dvorak keyboard in Windows we can look at. First we have the plain old US keyboard layout:
and then we have the United States - Dvorak keyboard layout:
The hint about the difference between Jamiel's layout and the one above is in the ToolTips, but to be more explicit let's right-click, we are talking:
versus:
or to be more explicit and launch that dialog, we re looking at:
versus
In fact, the only way to see what ties these two different assignments to that one key is to check the Advanced View and look at:
versus
and note that they share a common scan code of 25. Let's look at the two .KLC files, say sampling the key in question and a few on each side, for US:
versus United States - Dvorak:
Now obviously there are at least two different lessons one can learn here.... One could have the lesson of loading existing layouts when you can in order to make keyboard development easier. :-) Or one can take an existing .KLC file and modify the hell out of it to make keyboard layout with. The format is not publicly documented, but most of it is pretty self-explanatory: it is how we used to build all keyboard layouts before there was a tool. And you can even have this handy scan code map to help:
To be honest I wish I had this back in the early days, myself.... :-) Now the best answer is probably between these two extremes -- load an existing layout, and then modify the .KLC file to pimp as necessary! This blog brought to you by ⎇ (U+2387, aka ALTERNATIVE KEY SYMBOL)
Sinfest
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I've been spending a lot of time digging around in the Internet Archive. In the course of my excavations, I uncovered a metric buttload of old cult filmage in the public domain, and in a fit of obsessive-compulsive mania, decided to make a list that included every film in the archive that also makes an appearance in Michael Weldon's essential guide to midnight movies, 
amused
By Frank D. Russo
awake
bouncy
Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA 
Hello, this is Assembly Budget Chair John Laird.
happy
