What keeps a train on the tracks? How sure are you?

What keeps a train on the tracks? Yeah, right, that flange on the inside of the wheels. Obvious right?

Wrong.

What I like about this information is not just how the truth of the matter, despite it having seemed obvious to me since I was a kid, is incorrect, but how the truth of the matter is so subtle and elegant and beautiful.

And isn't this always the pattern of discovery?  And how many other much more complicated truths do I hold that might be debunked by subtle, elegant, and beautiful re-understanding?  Lots, I hope.

First seen at www.boingboing.net

Access Developer Extensions: Specify data type for Additional Registry Settings, Value parameter

I'm deploying my first MS Access 2007 runtime database using the Access Developer Extensions add-in, but code won't run on target machines because the Trust Center->Macro Setting is "Disable All Macros".  I need "Enable All Macros" or my database VBA code won't run, and there is no way to set this using Access in a runtime file, OMG, what am I going to do?!?

Yeah, tweak the registry, and ADE makes this easy with the Additional Registry Keys section on page three of the setup wizard.  Here are the keys I want to set ...

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Access\Security [VBAWarnings] = dword:000001

... and ...

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Access\Security\Trusted Locations [AllowNetworkLocations] = dword:000001

... but where I got stuck is how to specify the data type of the Value parameter.  The registry needs a REG_DWORD value or it has no effect.  So after much googling I finally found the solution here at UtterAccess posted by Mr. Albert Kallal, who refers us back here to a useful Microsoft page.

And since this is the kind of info I'll use infrequently enough to forget, here's the secret.

Prefix #x
The value is interpreted and stored as a hexadecimal value
(REG_BINARY).

Prefix #%
The value is interpreted and stored as an expandable string
(REG_EXPAND_SZ).

Prefix #
The value is interpreted and stored as an integer (REG_DWORD)

But it's a secret, OK.  So don't tell anybody.

Simplified: Higgs Boson

Tesla Motors Regenerative Braking

I just read an interesting overview of regenerative braking in electric cars.  When you step on the throttle, torque is applied to driving the motor and this consumes battery power, but when the car is rolling and you step off the throttle, reverse torque is applied to the engine and it immediately becomes a generator, not a consumer, of electrical power. 

I was always curious how this worked, and if you are too, and want more details, read the article.

Simplified: Authenticity

Authenticity matters to people, relationships and groups.  Authenticity is the state of being such that there is no difference between what a thing is, and what it appears to be.  This implies a lack of deception, and suggests an absence of misdirection.  When people are being authentic, it's like slaking your thirst on a hot day with a long cool drink.

Authenticity dispels illusion between people and allows them to gain traction in communication with each other, which is essential in order to resolve differences, which is in turn an essential component of intimacy.  Given that the world is a chaotic place where the difference between awesomeness and fuckwittery is only very slight, therefore being able to distinguish reality is not trivial, and distinguishing the reality of who a person is and where that person stands makes a difference.

Honesty differs from authenticity because I can be both honest and pretentious at the same time.  Honesty is a measure of the veracity of the information I communicate, and that is then a subset of authenticity.  Authenticity is not just honesty, but it's also a statement of the fact of who I am in respect to that honesty, so authenticity communicates in multiple dimensions.  Honesty is boolean.

Authenticity dispels confusion.  If you are left feeling confused in a relationship, family, or group, then you might be participating in an interpersonal confusopoly, which profits from promoting uncertainty and insecurity.  Interactions in these arenas are almost certainly not authentic, because authenticity confronts those problems.  Authenticity is OK to not know the answer, and to be wrong, and to be confused, and so the exercise of authenticity encourages processes that always have the net effect of reducing confusion and disorientation.

Authenticity employs and is exercised via acknowledgement.  If authenticity could walk, acknowledgement would be its legs.  Acknowledgement is an action you take after you see, understand, perceive, hear, or in some other way receive a communication from someone, having the effect of producing a sense of validation in that person. Acknowledgement produces validation, which assures the other of the realness or accuracy of his or her perception, so acknowledgement promotes clarity and understanding, and dispels illusions and confusion.

Acknowledgement is not always pretty.  Acknowledgement applies to failures and successes, bads and goods, critiques and compliments.  If in relationship I can't raise a complaint, have my complaint validated, and begin a process of deconstructing the problem in which the other will acknowledge participation, then I am oppressed.  If I am oppressed, then I will not be free, and I will be tempted to profit from misdirection in hidden efforts to undermine the oppressor, and authenticity dies.  In this sense the death of authenticity, or it's vital presence, is ultimately the responsibility of the whole group.

In a group that is mired in illusion, you should be authentic, but if your authenticity doesn't make a difference, you should quit that group.

Authenticity is the state of being such that there is no difference between what a thing is, and what it appears to be.  Be authentic.  Demand it from others.  Demand that others demand it from you.

Simplified: Misogyny

Expand your understanding of misogyny: read this article.

Rebecca Watson on Homeopathy

Smart, simple, clear and clever.  Love it.  Rebecca Watson of skepchick.org and @rebeccawatson

Simplified: How to be a Sound Banker.

I saw this quote today, which I think is really quite brilliant. 

The "sound" banker, alas! is not one who sees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way along with his fellows so that no one can really blame him.
–John Maynard Keynes

If I was as lousy at my job as are many politicians, bankers, and business executives, I wouldn't just be fired, I'd be jailed. 

Simplified: Why it's Easier to Take the Side of the Perpetrator

Through my sister, through her therapist, Andrew Feldmar, I read and re-posted this quote on Facebook.

"It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement and remembering."
--Judith Lewis Herman

But after a little Googling I found more of the quote and some info about the author.  Judith Lewis Herman is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Training Director of the Victims of Violence Program at The Cambridge Hospital.  A fuller version of the quote follows, and loses none of it's power...

"It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of the pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering...

In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it on herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.

The perpetrator's arguments prove irresistible when the bystander faces them in isolation. Without a supportive social environment, the bystander usually succumbs to the temptation to look the other way. This is true even when the victim is an idealized and valued member of society. Soldiers in every war, even those who have been regarded as heroes, complain bitterly that no one wants to know the real truth about war. When the victim is already devalued (a woman, a child), she may find that the most traumatic events in her life take place outside the realm of socially validated reality. Her experience becomes unspeakable. . .

To hold traumatic reality in consciousness requires a social context that affirms and protects the victim and that joins the victim and witness in a common alliance. For the individual victim, this social context is created by relationships with friends, lovers, and family. For the larger society, the social context is created by political movements that give voice to the disempowered."

This crystalizes for me some dynamics I've observed in my family of origin, where injustices seem to be swept under the table, and "the problem" is the person who is upset about having been victimized.

Simplified: Public Key Cryptography

Here's how public key cryptography works.  I send you a box with an open padlock in it, and only I have a key to that padlock.  You put your message in the box and lock it and send it to me, and only I can open it.
The padlock is the public key, which is a kind of filter that an algorithm uses to uniquely scramble a message such that it can only be unscrambled using the private key.  So when you connect to a website using the https protocol, your browser receives the public key and scrambles everything it sends back to that address, including things like your credit card number.