February 2008 Archives

This is so upsetting I can not find words. Read the article and the linked source from which Boing Boing quoted.

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winner in economics, says the Iraq war has cost $3 trillion so far. According to the Guardian, "three trillion could have fixed America's social security problem for half a century."

[From Three trillion dollars - Nobel winning economist tabulates true cost of Iraq war - Boing Boing ]

And then we are reminded that the soldiers were scapegoated by this administrations savage inhumanity. These pictures are graphic and probably do not begin to tell the whole story. We did this, why exactly? Why wasn't this president impeached? Why wasn't Donald Rumsfeld fired and prosecuted?!

And George Bush wants to in any way whatsoever justify these crimes? And the nation is not outraged?!! The TED2008 presentation, How Good People Turn Evil, From Stanford to Abu Ghraib, by Psychologist Philip Zimbardo must have been deeply disturbing. That we as a nation tolerate, even endorse, this level of depraved inhumanity deeply upsets me. The movie associated with the presentation is nothing short of a horror.

This is bound to induce some sort of "issue" with the living organism!

If you want to really get psychedelic, click it (if you can land your mouse on it--it movies!) to see the larger version!

Source: opticalillusions4kids

I've been so tense for the past several weeks! My muscles are in knots! On top of keeping a busy and exciting pace with work (which involves a lot of travel), I am also moving. That alone is stressful enough.

But add to this the fact that I've been dealing with endless issues with my laptop, and I am ready to go over the edge. It contains everything I use for work and pleasure--my life. I keep routine backups, but that has even been corrupted.

I purchased another laptop as a spare as I can not do without one. Every time my main machine dies (we're on the second trip to the repair shop!), I lose hours and hours--literally days of time consumed by making certain I have saved all of the data from the machine heading in for repair. I have to keep working.

I am so over this I can not find words!

So last night I was so uptight and tense, I decided it was time for my once-every-4-year massage. An hour and a half of having every single muscle in your body taken apart fiber by fiber will kill anyone! But it always gets rid of the tension.

Today I'm so sore I feel as I I have been run over by a steam roller. But, it's all good...

I've intended for several weeks to recount a situation that happened in the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International airport. I was walking to my gate from the food court where I had grabbed a quick lunch. As I walked an oriental lady began speaking loudly in an excited tone.

I looked to see what had caused her to become so animated. She appeared to be talking to me, but I could not understand what she was saying so emphatically and could imagine no reason why she would want to talk to me at all. She began gesturing behind me.

I turned to see another airport worker walking at a brisk pace toward me with something in his hand held out as if to give it to me. I had no idea what was going on but looked to see what he had.

Apparently, when I had taken my folded ticket out of my pants pocket to see what gate I should go to, I had pulled several hundred dollars in cash out, which fell to the floor.

I had no idea. These people were being very kind to me, making sure I got the money I had dropped--money they could have so easily taken.

Good people are everywhere!

I've been saving this picture in my "to blog about in the future" heap. Little did I know that today, this very moment in fact, I would feel exactly like this picture. I've noticed that with every heartbeat, the picture moves--or I move, or the world begins to spin, or... And I don't even drink!

Now is the time to post it!

Ahah: Everyone knows the magic of Command + Tab. But in 10.5 we have a new feature we can use in conjunction with Command + Tab.

Click on a file you want to open in a specific application, begin to drag it, press Command + Tab and drop the file you are dragging onto the open application (which naturally must be running or it wouldn't show up when using the Command + Tab feature) you want to open the file.

Typically I would right click on the file and select the application from the contextual menu. Many times I have to scroll down the list to get to the application. This is better.

Well, I've been reading a lot lately about an increasing number of scientist writing and speaking about global warming being much worse than previously anticipated. Now I read that the sun will swallow up the planet in 7.6 billion years. Well, call me insensitive, but I just don't care. I doubt humanity will exist on this planet in 1,000 years as carelessly as we now live. By the way, where's my sunscreen? :o)

The Sun will vaporise the Earth unless we can change our orbit.

New calculations by University of Sussex astronomers predict that the Earth will be swallowed up by the Sun in about 7.6 billion years unless the Earth's orbit can be altered.

[From University of Sussex Press Release: The Sun will vaporise the Earth unless we can change our orbit]

I guess corruption in politics will never go away. At least these people did something about it!

Texas Republicans have worked overtime to make it harder for key Democratic voting groups to vote and be represented fairly. The redistricting games they’ve played are infamous. And for the Prairie View A&M University precincts, they put the early-polling place more than seven miles from the school.

So what did the students in this video do? They shut down the highway as they marched seven miles to cast their votes on the first day of early voting.

[From The Field » Texas Early Voting Wave as Reaction to Systemic Disenfranchisement]

That abhors the expressions: "went missing," "gone missing," "disrespect me," and the like? These constructions are awkward at the least and certainly have the ring of ignorance to this ear. Yet I hear them more and more--even on major networks. Are these expressions now considered correct English?

"The person is missing." "The last time the person was seen was..." "Do not show me disrespect." Sure, a few more words are required, but why sacrifice clarity of expression and some modicum of sophistication for hollow, tinny minimalism?!

I just found this post about "clone shots." I posted a "clone panorama" of me back on November 12, 2007, entitled, "Me in the Kitchen , without knowing that such an "art form" existed. The picture below, by May May I?, is a clone shot: in other words, the same guy, Ari, is everyone in the picture. Clever. The other pictures at the original post link are also interesting. What I find intriguing is that this technique seems to add more "story line" to each photo. You can click the image below to see a larger version.

And the winner is...

In the 1970's I bought an 8 track: the cassette won that format war.

In the 1980's I bought a betamax machine: VHS won that format war.

In the 2000's I bought a Blu-ray disk player. I am on the winning format team. For once, the better format actually won the format war!

TOKYO (AP) -- Toshiba's decision to no longer develop, make or market high-definition HD DVD players and recorders will mean consumers can start feeling more confident about buying the victorious rival technology -- a Blu-ray disc player.

[Source: Toshiba Quits HD DVD Business - New York Times]

I unexpectedly had the opportunity to work with an amazing director/producer who volunteered his time working with the students from the last school at which I worked. He saw the world, life experience, through different eyes than the rest of us. I remember him saying to the students as they developed their digital media projects: "Show people the world in which they live in a way they have never seen it before." That really resonated with the kids, because they did just that!

I came across this video clip online, a metro commercial in Madrid I think, that does this just brilliantly. Click the picture to go to the site and watch the clip. It's worth the 30 seconds.

In my opinion, Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig has hit the nail on the head about where to begin if we are to attack the influences that adversely impact our political process. I don't know if he can accomplish his objectives, but it would be a gift from heaven if he did! His new website centered around his interest in running for congress is Lessig08. I think having a member of congress who is dedicated to reforming copyright law will also be a really good thing. (Big media money would disagree!)

I'm sitting here in Portland, Oregon, looking out from my hotel room window at the snow-capped Mount Hood glowing in the early evening sun. Just gorgeous! Dramatic. Spectacular. The flight in presented the most astounding views!

An offer was made. The offer was accepted. In about 45 days, I will be a resident of Manhattan Beach--less than a mile from the Pacific Ocean. The sagging California real estate market seems to be working to buyers' advantage.

After taking a whirlwind tour of numerous townhomes and houses in Hermosa and Manhattan beaches, seeing the youthful energy level a warm (76º) weekend brings to Hermosa beach, receiving advice from two friends who live in different sections of Hermosa beach, and hearing the perspective of the real estate agent (really nice guy who ran for mayor but didn't win), I realized that the sand section at either beach is probably not for me. I am old enough to enjoy my sleep during the night--especially on those rare nights when I actually sleep all night long! (Can we say, "old man?") And the whole bar/drinking/carousing scene has never been for me.

Less than a mile from the water itself, but living in a quiet neighborhood that is set apart from the noise seems like a good option. (Wish I had had my Canon XLR with the wide angle lens! The pictures I took with this little PowerShot were rather lack luster.)

So now the work begins. More to come I'm sure.

I was driving down Manhattan Beach Boulevard when I beheld a wonderful sight: a couple, easily in their 60's, maybe 70's, laughing and having a great time driving an old, gorgeously restored, bright yellow, wood paneled, beach buggy station wagon with a yellow surfboard sticking out of the back window--fins up. Fantastic! I wish I could had snapped a picture of it. Below is a picture of the type of vehicle, but their buggy was much more cool!

My computer's hard drive inexplicably died two days ago. My internet connection seemed slow when posting so I decided to reboot--a reboot that never happened. I've spent the better part of the time since then trying to recover critical files from the dead drive, files not backed up in my last time machine backup. Am I the only person that gets so annoyed with time machine reducing my 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo machine's responsiveness so much that I shut it off? Maybe time capsule will offload some of that??

The computer, my MacBook Pro, goes in to Apple today to have the hard drive replaced. In the meantime, I've created an external boot disk that more or less replicates the failed computer, though some of the software lost registration information and will need to be reinstalled. I think I'll just wait until I have to rebuild the new hard drive to go through all of that nonsense.

When I went to create the external boot drive I learned that OS 10.5 uses a new disk format that the PowerPC Macs can not read when using it as a boot up disk. So I suppose my external will not boot up an older machine. It gets even better: you can format an external drive to be a boot up disk for 10.5 but then the 10.5 install disk will not install 10.5 on it. Hell! I'm sure someone has figured out a workaround, but I don't have the time to hunt for it.

I'm not really sure what blew up my computer. But in salvaging files I found several that were so corrupted they would not copy. What causes such things?! Technology!

We have grown critically dependent on the world wide web!

Last Wednesday two undersea communication cables carrying Internet traffic were severed near Alexandria, Egypt, causing widespread outages in Egypt and India that left a reported 100 million people without Net access. On Friday, it was discovered that a third cable, off the coast of Dubai, had been cut. And then, over the weekend, a fourth cable, between the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, was reported to be damaged.

No one's quite sure who or what has caused the damage. Early reports that a wayward ship's anchor was to blame were contradicted over the weekend by Egypt's communications ministry, which said that no ships were in the area when the first two cables were damaged. With a lack of reliable news reports on the situation, conspiracy theories are beginning to spread through the blogosphere. One particularly imaginative theory is that a US submarine severed the cables in order to cut off internet service to Iran. Another is that it's all a ruse to distract attention from a big wire-tapping effort.

Whatever the cause, or causes, the cable breaks reveal both the vulnerability and the robustness of Internet service.

[From Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Who cut the cables?]

At the end of each post you will see something like this:

At the bottom right sidebar you can even subscribe to these podcasts by clicking on the Talkr icon! In the not too distant future I will even host the podcast feed as a podcast series at iTunes.

I personally read much faster than I listen. In other words, the audio seems to slow me down thus annoying me. But sometimes it's just nice to sit back and listen or multitask. The computerized voice is rather pleasant!

*Once a post is no longer featured in the RSS feed, the audio is no longer available for it even though the link may still appear under the post.

Click the play button at the bottom

In January, 2008, CBS's 60 Minutes interviewed George Piro, the FBI agent who spent months interrogating the captured Saddam Hussein before his trial and execution. The CBS interview offers a small glimpse of the incompetence (or dishonesty) of George Bush and his administration as well as the thinking of Saddam himself.

The president repeatedly assured us that Saddam and Osama bin Laden were conspiring to use Iraq's WMD to take out the United States. At the time, I trusted our president. I didn't realize the administration's level of incompetence, disregard for people (reveal by Hurricane Katrina), and perhaps disregard for the truth.

The truth: Saddam wanted nothing to do with Osama bin Laden and thought him to be a fanatic that could not be trusted. He was expending all of his efforts committing atrocities to keep his nation sovereign and under his rule. The WMD had long since been destroyed, mostly by the UN inspectors, and what little remained was destroyed by the order of Saddam himself. In Saddam's mind this could never be revealed without costing him the power to rule his country with fear.

The US president's act of invasion goes well beyond any incompetent misunderstanding of the object of his hatred and distrust. This inexcusable war, the killing of tens of thousands of people, the maiming of many more, the complete de-stabilization of the volatile middle east, the loss of US honor and credibility around the world, the wrecking of the US economy is the result of these two men: both narrow minded fanatics with an abundance of arrogance, delusional thinking, and with limited, incomplete and inaccurate information and world views.

I trusted the president as this scenario began to unfold. Now there seems to be no doubt: Too much power in too little minds. Their little school yard spat should never have been allowed to happen. Dear God!

Watch the two CBS online clips from the interview: One, Two.

with my RSS feed aggregator, NetNewsWire. And a few weeks back the program, which I bought several years ago, became a free download! Mac users need to download it today. It has a wonderfully rich feature set. I'm continually learning more creative and efficient ways to use it, like this article, for example!

worried about Microsoft gobbling up flickr.

A small but vocal minority on Flickr are already staging online protests at the prospect of a Microsoft takeover. Flickr is one of several popular Web 2.0 websites owned by Yahoo that loyal users fear will suffer under Microsoft ownership.

News Source: Wired Magazine's Flickr Rebellion Brews at Specter of M$ Acquisition
Photo Source: Gnal's Photostream

I am going to have to buy another season pass to the Jon Stewart Show on iTunes. This guys just splits my gut every time I hear him! His comedy is brilliant. Take a short look:

I personally think that Microsoft's apparently inevitable purchase of Yahoo! is a really rotten thing. I personally detest Microsoft's lack of innovation, lack of dependability, and sequential way of viewing the world order--to name but a few things I dislike about this company.

But, worst of all, I fear that, in their typical monopolistic view of making money, they will attempt to lock Mac users out of the Flickr world in perhaps very subtle but profound ways. Flickr has perhaps become the largest collection of tagged photos in the world. I can see Microsoft integrating access to uploads, searches, and enhanced functionality deep into their failed Vista-type OS and locking out or making needlessly complicated providing access to "other vendors."

Microsoft lacks innovation, creativity, flair, pizzaz, sex appeal, agility, visioning, yada, yada, yada. They think like programmers: in that logical, sterile, sequential manner that seems flat and lifeless--dead best sums it up.

Photography is art and science. Microsoft lacks any concept of aesthetics and can't seem to even get the science part (programming) of their failed OS right, even with their enormously fat bank accounts.

The flickr tag line sums it up best: "flickr loves you." Microsoft only loves your money!

Sad will be the day!

I sat on a jury this week for a murder trial. The people on the jury were excellent: good people with common sense, intelligence, and who took their duty very seriously, very thoughtfully, and sincerely wanted to do what was right for the accused and the victim.

Listening to the details of the case was very difficult. Seeing the autopsy photographs and hearing the details of the manner of death from the coroner was even more difficult.

The case began very slowly. I thought we would be serving for weeks. But after some very tedious trail of evidence testimony, the trial began to move forward. I must confess that the defendant's attorneys, the prosecutor, the judge, and even the court recorder (who demanded silence in the room) took their jobs very seriously. I felt strongly that these people wanted to be certain the accused had a fair trial.

Our safety as a jury was also taken very seriously. We had 3 armed sheriff's officers escort us where ever we went.

After the trial, the judge (and her staff) came back and spoke with us for about 30 minutes. In this more personal encounter she had a completely different demeanor and was delightful. Then all of the attorneys and people from their offices came back to talk with us. Again, we probably talked for over 30 minutes.

The whole experience was professional. The system worked well. While this experience was a difficult time that no one took lightly, I was impressed with the fairness, seriousness, and properness with which this case was conducted from jury selection to rendering of verdict.

So often we see where the system fails the American people. So, seeing the justice system work was very rewarding to me personally. My thanks to everyone who makes this possible in our nation and around the world.

Thanks to Mary Julia for this little resource! Wondering who among the candidates shares your views? This short online questionnaire purports to tell you. I took it and found the results interesting.

Link to the questionnaire.

Exxon shatters all profit records and makes corporate history by taking in (I scarce can call it "earning" - maybe "theft" would be a better term) $11.7 billion in quarterly profit.

This means they stole, I mean "earned" $1,300 every second in 2007.

Where is the outrage?!

Source: CNNMoney.com

I know my readers will be completely shocked to learn that I do not support the war in Iraq. I initially gave the president the benefit of the doubt until it became blisteringly apparent that he deliberately and intentionally lied to the American people to accomplish his own agenda.

You may find this short video of some interest. I know nothing of the organization it promotes at the end, but I think they frame a perspective that needs further exploration.