With winter full upon us, the urge is to stay warm and comfortable. Nothing satiates my morning hunger than Spam and cold rice. Today, rather than the usual over medium eggs, I poached them. Lightly salted, this was the breakfast of kings.
Jon Huntsman Denounces Nasty, Jingoistic Video Allegedly Made By Ron Paul Supporters (VIDEO)
If Huntsman were running in the Democratic primaries, he’d give the President a run for the money. If Huntsman and Bloomberg ran a third party campaign, they could win it because moderates of both parties make a plurality. Coalition governments exist throughout the world in multiparty environments. The internet and its effect on traditional media prove that there are no mass market demographics to market to. What works in Portlandia does not under Friday Night Lights. The two parties are like the three national television networks. Everyone is feeling disenfranchised, and the extremely committed end up with a greater voice and disproportionate impact because they show up to vote.
This type of video in another setting, let’s say an Engadget article about iPhone users being pompous, overly self-aware baristas, would be just troll bait. Yes there are people who think like this, but they can and are free to do so. The point of this video is to create a reaction, and it seems a bit too cute to be authentic. People who think like this usually aren’t so organized. I don’t believe its authenticity.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
One percent of the 1%
From Evernote: |
One percent of the 1% |
The recent focus on Kim Jong Il’s lifestyle brought gasps of astonishment -he sent his sushi chef on a private jet to Japan to shop for rice cakes while his country was starving. Fact is, among the wealthy, there are the über wealthy, and among the über wealthy are the super duper wealthy whose daily budget would feed maybe a thousand families. While we do not begrudge anyone success -as this is the cornerstone of America, even the most callous person has to admit there is some injustice in North Korean society. It does not come from a lack of guns -the noncoms always outnumber the officers, and the fact that people can bribe border guards to escape means that some independent thinking occurs. The fact is that a religion, a cult of personality, sustains the vast inequality of North Korean society. Religions demand faith over logic. Directing the resources of a nation to the sustenance of a few humans at the top defies logic. It is a religious-type faith and fear of retribution, fear of apostasy and heresy, and fear of change that causes this gangrene to linger. What are the idols that drive injustice here at home? It is the belief that success comes from being favored by God and that lack of success comes from sin. It is the belief in absolutes that define religion. This idea afflicts our politics as much as the cult of personality afflicts North Korea.
The subordination of logic to dogma and its use in organizing societies is a old tradition. It gets people across desserts, oceans, and helps individuals process grief and the unfathomable concept of infinity. It is a human trait as ingrained as circling three times before bedding in a dog. Yet this kind of thinking is also used to demonize the poor, write off the sick, and rationalize the unemployed. It is extended into contempt for anything for the public good that comes from taxes -clean water, safe roads, national rail, public health, education and safety. It sanctifies success defined as wealth and therefore denigrates anything that might take away from that wealth.
In our still free society, one’s success is the result of not only hard work, but favorable circumstances, good health, and the support of people who were midwives to the success -the family and community that nurtured the individual and the society that provided the fertile ground for success. It’s the good plumbing that provided fresh water for excellent development. It’s the public safety provided community police and fire departments. It is the critical mass of excellent citizens that allow for success and justice. I think that is the message of the OWS protesters, that the people who get tasty morsels flown in for them not get protections at the cost of the people making it possible.
I wish for the new year the restoration of reason and clear thinking guided not by desire for retribution or a return to a past that never really was. I want an America where everyone has available all the opportunities while being good citizens and supporting the community, state, and country that allowed that to happen.
Facebook Timeline: It’s Alive!
If I put enough data into the timeline, my likes and friends, my tastes, my thoughts, my hopes, my fears, my dreams, my purchases, my gifts, my dislikes, my preferences, my comments, my chats, my photos, my locations, and everything else, you can then one day create an on line avatar that would pass the Turing test as me, and I would then be able to live free from having to update Facebook.
Spaceship! Coming Alien Apocalypse
Link -link to video. On this Gizmodo post, there is video of a spaceship like object becoming visible as a solar flare burns past the planet Mercury. The web is in a flurry of speculation over this. Is it a cloaked Klingon ship revealed by the flare?
This is how most alien apocalypse movies start. It’s 2012 eve and you have to choose your favorite end of the world -apocalypse by:
1. Sentient Robots
2. Sexy Fembots
3. Apes
4. Zombies
5. Flu
6. Jesus v. anti-Jesus
7. Asteroid
8. Aliens
9. Vampires
10. People who obsess and fantasize about vampires.
I’m hoping Cylons -a ship full of 6′s and 8′s.
Why Keyboards Matter and Why They Must Go Away
Tablets are often denigrated as being merely consumption devices, and there is some truth to it. For actual work -or what we call work in this latter day, we do need keyboards, but that is because of the infancy of touch UI, and its likely successor, the voice UI (Siri). In healthcare, not having keyboards is a big deal -the ones in hospital hallways are generally filthy, but accessing Windows via Citrix on a tablet is not fun -just not set up for touch. Being able to talk to a device like it was your ever-present first assistant -like a caddy but less bulky, would be ideal.
“Give me Mrs. Jones vitals for today. What is her potassium level? Order a bolus of saline, CBC, Chem 7 in morning labs, and schedule for surgery on Friday -what? oh..an exploration with possible resection.”
One day. until then, watching The New Girl on Hulu rocks.
GOP Debate: Romney Aide Struggles To Answer Immigration Question While Attacking Gingrich
The season is ripest it has ever been for a centrist candidate when the parties start balkanizing into far right, center right, center left, and far left. It reflects the balkanization of our popular culture with the onset of the internet. We are used to microscheduling our entertainment first with TIVO/DVR’s then now with streaming video and youtube. Are you big box or Amazon? Are you eBay or Woot? In this setting, there less of a chance of a great unifier in chief, but a certainty of a great blandifier in chief. No Steve Jobs like leader is possible, but any number of lumpenproletariat-derived mouth breathers in sack-like dark suits could fill the job description when the market is triangulated properly.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
The Top 25 Worst Passwords Of 2011: See What To Avoid
One of the methods of creating strong passwords involves creating 26×10 grids of random alphanumerics on an excel spreadsheet and saving it -this is your grid. You then choose a starting point a2 for example, and then your password is the 7 to 10 characters that you follow on the grid in a memorized, stereotypical pattern. you can print the grid out and carry it -without the knowledge of the starting point and your typical pattern, it’s very hard to crack, yet easy for you to recall if you forget the password. it creates a short hand for your passwords -for example, instead of remembering le2kLkd00Ox&, you just have to remember the starting point Z6 for example and even write Z6 down if you must.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
