Thursday, May 27, 2010

New Method of Pressure on Journalists

Russia: Taking Children as a New Method of Pressure on Journalists

by 

By Gregory Asmolov
Children of Galina Dmitrieva, an oppositionary journalist and activist, were taken by Russian police after she published an investigation about Russian car manufacturer Avtovaz [EN], Anatoliy Baranov reported[RUS]. After instant blog-campaign her children were returned. Blogger Marina Litvinovich suggests [RUS] this method was used before against at least one oppositionary journalist.
This is reprehensible!  Regardless of the influence, good or bad, on the adult journalist what does trauma like this to do children?  

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Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Lessons on Life

10:30 AM Tuesday May 25, 2010 
by Adi Ignatius 

A couple of weeks ago, my remarkable brother in law, John Tarbell, died in New York City.

John [didn't have] time to finish his most important project: a comprehensive guide to how to live a good life. It was something he spent years working on for an audience of one: his only child, a daughter, now 15

THE 8 CAREER LESSONS FROM JOHN TARBELL

1. Seek out a mentor — possibly someone who was involved in your hiring process. Learn what to expect two or three years ahead and prepare for it.

2. Assume the behavior and habits of the people at the next level, and you will demonstrate that you can get there.

3. Whatever you do, be sure your involvement and actions' ethics and results will look honorable and wise if they appear in the right hand column of the Wall Street Journal's front page. They just might.

4. ''Try to find out what you're good at, and have a passion for, and get someone to pay you for doing it'' — advice I was given early on, and it has always proved to be the path for success and, just as importantly, happiness.

5. The first job is rarely anything but a start. Do the best you can, try to work with people you like and admire, and hope for the best. In your lifetime, you may change jobs, if not your career path, many times.

6. Avoid bosses who promise promotions and advancement but who take credit for your work. They won't fulfill their promises to you.

7. Save for a rainy day and always be able to support yourself. You can lose everything in a flash, and scenarios of financial adversity do present themselves in life, even to the best prepared.

8. Avoid speculative ventures. If making money were easy, everyone would be wealthy. If someone can't answer all your questions and ''what ifs,'' there's something wrong.

Adi Ignatius is the Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Business Review Group.

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Tuesday, May 25, 2010

gapingvoid cartoon #91 - 'Thank You' May 25, 2010

Iran: Student activist started hunger strike

By Hamid Tehrani

Majid Tavakoli, Iranian student actvist, started his hunegr strike in prison in Tehran. Sight writes [fa] “Tavakoli is not only a name. He is a legned. He started his hunger strike but the world does not pay attention.”

Hundreds of Iranian men have dressed as women in Hijab to support Majid Tavakoli, a student activist who was arrested on December 7, and express solidarity with women. Iranian authorities claim Mr. Tavakoli was dressed as a woman to escape after delivering a speech in Tehran on Student Day.

However, human rights activists in Iran have published a report from an eyewitness saying: “All the pictures published by the state media are false and a clear use of immoral means against student and civil activists in Iran.”

Hundreds of Iranian men are now dressed as women in their FaceBook profiles. Here is a YouTube video in support of Majid that has collected some of these photos (begins after 42 seconds).

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Monday, May 24, 2010

Zappos Values

Zappos Values as reported by Harvard Business Review

We eventually came up with our final list of 10 core values, which we still use today:

  1. Deliver WOW Through Service
  2. Embrace and Drive Change
  3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
  4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
  5. Pursue Growth and Learning
  6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
  7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
  8. Do More With Less
  9. Be Passionate and Determined
  10. Be Humble

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Sunday, May 23, 2010

Before the Deployment

by Jehanne Dubrow

He kisses me before he goes. While I, 
still dozing, half-asleep, laugh and rub my face 

against the sueded surface of the sheets, 
thinking it’s him I touch, his skin beneath 

my hands, my body curving in to meet 
his body there. I never hear him leave. 

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Chrome Extension Of The Day (CEOTD): Frame Two Pages

Frame Two Pages - Once you click at the extension's icon, the current tab will be merged with the previous one (on the left) into a frameset with two columns (frames) or rows (options offer 3 buttons: rows/columns/ad_hoc). They'll be ordered in the same way as the tabs (left, right).

In other words, your physical screen will be split into two areas.

If the current window only has one tab, you'll be asked about the URL of the left frame.

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Saturday, May 22, 2010

Stupid is as stupid does... - Forest G.

Wakefieldcartoon

Tall Guy Writes in frustration depicting the anti-vaccine fallacy in its simplest picture book form.  Perhaps the conspiracy theorists will be able to follow along.
         

Shared by 

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Call on Fox "News" to fire John Stossel

Dear friends,

On Wednesday, Rand Paul, the GOP's US Senate candidate for Kentucky repeated his claim that a central piece of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was wrong, and that businesses should be free to discriminate against whomever they please.1Paul and his supporters don't seem to care that without federal intervention, Black people might still be second-class citizens in most aspects of American life: where we eat, where we work, even where we live.

Then, on Thursday, FOX contributor and business anchor John Stossel went even further than Paul and called for the section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that applies to business to be repealed.2 And he's refused to back down.

It's time to hold FOX accountable:

http://www.colorofchange.org/stossel/?id=1867-526328

While Rand Paul may have started this outrage, he can be taken care of at the ballot box — FOX News can't.

Stossel's position is an affront to Black America and everyone in this country who believes in racial progress. It's one thing to be a candidate with backwards views. It's another to be employed by a supposed news network and to use that platform to push hateful ideas that our nation repudiated decades ago.

It's time that FOX drop Stossel. It's why I've joined ColorOfChange.org in demanding Fox do so immediately. If after hearing from thousands of people like you and I, FOX refuses to act, it will make clear that FOX stands with Stossel and his values, and ColorOfChange has pledged to go directly after the network with a major public campaign.

Can you take a moment to add your voice to the call to fire Stossel? After you do, please ask your friends and family to do the same:

http://www.colorofchange.org/stossel/?id=1867-526328

FOX has a history of providing a platform for bigoted views and race-baiting. Most recently more than 300,000 people helped us hold FOX accountable by stripping Glenn Beck of more than 100 of his advertisers, after Beck called President Obama a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred for white people."3

But Stossel has arguably gone beyond Beck, echoing segregationist arguments from the Jim Crow era:

"It's time now to repeal that part of the law because private businesses ought to get to discriminate. And I won't ever go to a place that's racist and I will tell everybody else not to and I'll speak against them. But it should be their right to be racist."

Stossel went on to argue something that history has disproved time and again — that private business will do the right thing, without being compelled by laws, because no one would patronize a business that discriminates. It's a blind belief in market fundamentalism that just isn't in sync with reality. In the '60s, white-owned businesses that allowed Blacks as customers lost business. Market forces actually perpetuated discrimination; they didn't combat it. Simply put: segregation would still be active in parts of this country if government hadn't stepped in.

And recent history has shown that the public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act is still needed. In 1994, it was used to hold Denny's Restaurants accountable, after the chain repeatedly refused to seat Black customers.4 Just last year, it was used to go after a Philadelphia pool that prevented Black children from swimming there.5

It's time for Fox News to make a choice. Are they willing to continue to give a platform to racially-divisive rhetoric and revive dangerously outdated perspectives? Or will they move with the rest of the nation into into the 21st century? Please join me in calling on Fox News to fire John Stossel. And once you do, please ask your friends and family to do the same:

http://www.colorofchange.org/stossel/?id=1867-526328

Thank you.

References:

1. http://huff.to/cjOnxL 


2. http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201005200033 
3. http://bit.ly/aoJUUy 
4. http://nyti.ms/bpVZZY 
5. http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/January/10-crt-033.html

Thanks

William Meloney
---------------------------
Voice: 270-215-4275

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Friday, May 21, 2010

I can scare them...

See mama, I can scare them just like you do.


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Wednesday, May 19, 2010

When I was younger...

When I was younger and naive I took umbrage with politicians who blatantly insulted my intelligence.  As I grew older I became familiar with the politician's constituents.  Today I stand in awe of those who would speak half-truths to half-wits.

A government elected by popular decree is exactly what the people deserve.

(This message brought to you by the committee to elect Sarah Palin The Red Queen of the Tea Party.)

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Monday, May 17, 2010

...to Publicy and returns...

"As my experience shows, people are willing to give their location if they know they'll get something for it."

This is the fundamental issue surrounding publicy.  This is the missing element from the Facebork experiment.  Aside from the illusion of community I am not getting anything back for willingly giving my location information to FB.
That having been said I am turning away from any further 'walled-garden' discussions.
Time to get on with the rest of my life.
Peace
- Papa

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Right is Correct


(Fine Print: If you would rather not receive my blathering and such please let me know and I will remove you from my list.)

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Impossible Motion

Impossible motion: magnet-like slopes

2010 First prize
Koukichi Sugihara

Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences, Japan

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Monday, May 10, 2010

The Full Circle


In preparation for celebrations marking Buddha's birthday.



I first saw this pic in the WSJ, attributed to Getty Images.  I subsequently scraped it from MSN.COM

Not your father's Intertubes...

Successful companies in social media
act more like Dale Carnegie
and less like Mad Men

Listening first, selling second


(Fine Print: If you would rather not receive my blathering and such please let me know and I will remove you from my list.)

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Saturday, May 08, 2010

Faceborg scrapes your un-preferences too!


No longer a fan of something? Facebook just made it easier to “unlike” your favorite Facebook Pages through the embedded fan box widgets. While many users have actually requested that Facebook a full functioning “Dislike” feature to express negative sentiment, this feature is simply an easier way to not be a fan of existing Facebook Pages that you like.

Why Facebook would add the unlike button is unknown but many Facebook Page owners have been complaining to us about the feature this morning. Previously, it was pretty difficult to “unfan” (now called “unlike”) Facebook Pages from external websites and even within the Facebook Page itself.

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Things people wish they hadn't said on the radio...

Excerpt from NPR's All Thing Considered report:
by AMANDA RABINOWITZ

. . .

RABINOWITZ: But some Kent State University students, like Max Dunzik(ph), question whether they're being saturated with observances of an event that's no longer relevant.

Mr. MAX DUNZIK (Student, Kent State University): It starts to lose its luster after a while. Maybe like every 10, it's sweet, but the 41st, the 42nd, the 43rd, the 44th, like after a while, it's like okay, we get it.

. . . 

Oh yeah, that is "sweet" and we are sooooo glad you "get it".

kent state

...
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

"It's still hard to believe I had to write this song. It's ironic that I capitalized on the death of these American students. Probably the most important lesson ever learned at an American place of learning. 

David Crosby cried after this take."

from liner notes of the Decade album

photo by John Filo

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Thinking Mind Tools


31/03/2010


HAND WERK POUND SHOP

 
Silence here for a couple of weeks. A busy period of making for Kids.Modern and forPoundshop (opening tomorrow), a pop-up-experimental-shop curated by Householdand Sara Melin. The shop space on Hoxton Street looks great, designed by architectFinn Williams and product designer Fredrik Paulsen. My contribution is an edition of 50 Hand Werk boxes, each containing a set of materials and forms, for abstract play.
Link: The Pound Shop
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Tuesday, May 04, 2010

On the Internet no one can see you're a manatee.

On the Internet everyone can see your humanity.


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Monday, May 03, 2010

kiss Spring comes

9.
by E. E. Cummings


there are so many tictoc 
clocks everywhere telling people 
what toctic time it is for 
tictic instance five toc minutes toc 
past six tic 

Spring is not regulated and does 
not get out of order nor do 
its hands a little jerking move 
over numbers slowly 

we do not 
wind it up it has no weights 
springs wheels inside of 
its slender self no indeed dear 
nothing of the kind. 

(So,when kiss Spring comes 
we'll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss 
lips because tic clocks toc don't make 
a toctic difference 
to kisskiss you and to 
kiss me)

From: 

Academy of American Poets

(Fine Print: If you would rather not receive my blathering and such please let me know and I will remove you from my list.)

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Saturday, May 01, 2010

With a heavy heart...

Open letter to my friends...

Mark Zuckerburg is the CEO, founder, owner, and developer of Facebook.  When he developed the original FB concept he relied on two fundamental needs of human beings - friendship and belonging.  Mark's endeavor grew exponentially to the Facebook of today.  Today the two fundamental needs of human beings - friendship and belonging - are being used to coerce users into accepting greater and greater infringements on their personal privacy.

Writing for the Electronic Freedom Foundation Kurt Opsahl details Facebook's Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline.

Facebook Privacy Policy circa December 2009:

Certain categories of information such as your name, profile photo, list of friends and pages you are a fan of, gender, geographic region, and networks you belong to are considered publicly available to everyone, including Facebook-enhanced applications, and therefore do not have privacy settings. You can, however, limit the ability of others to find this information through search using your search privacy settings.

Current Facebook Privacy Policy, as of April 2010:

When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. ... The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” ... Because it takes two to connect, your privacy settings only control who can see the connection on your profile page. If you are uncomfortable with the connection being publicly available, you should consider removing (or not making) the connection.

Viewed together, the successive policies tell a clear story. Facebook originally earned its core base of users by offering them simple and powerful controls over their personal information. As Facebook grew larger and became more important, it could have chosen to maintain or improve those controls. Instead, it's slowly but surely helped itself — and its advertising and business partners — to more and more of its users' information, while limiting the users' options to control their own information.

... while limiting the users' options to control their own information.  AND, coercing with threats of loss of friendship and not belonging.  If you think I am being extreme try Deactivating your Facebook account.  Read and internalize the last screen of coercion that FB slaps you with.

AND after I did deactivate my FB account the I got the real surprise ... My account is not accessible to me, as I have deactivated it, but it is still accessible to everyone INSIDE the walled garden of Facebook.  So much for "deactivation". 

Sooooo, I have investigated Terminating my Facebook account.  First you have to log into Facebook (which among other things re-activates your account - if you have deactivated it - and displays a "Welcome back" message - more friendship and belonging coercion.)   Once back in you have to go to this link location: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account   Once there you must "Submit" ...then provide your password, again (like you weren't logged in in order to get to this place.)  THEN you have to answer the Captcha "What are these two words" requirement.  THEN you have to wait two weeks (without logging into Facebook - which would negate your "termination order".)  Can you say emotional and psychological manipulation?

Some of history's most despicable despots have used more humane methods of torturing their prisoners.

So, I love all of my friends and most of my enemies BUT I will no longer be held hostage by Facebook.

If you feel inclined to respond to any of this please send me an e-mail at wmeloney at gmail dot com as I will not be able to see anything that you post in FB.

Thanks

- Bill

William "Papa" Meloney
---------------------------
Voice: 270-215-4275

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Corrupt Power and bright shiny things

Apple May Be Gunning for Open Source Codecs
from GigaOM by Ryan Lawler
The latest indication that Apple is trying to strong-arm publishers to adopt HTML5 and H.264 came today, as Steve Jobs reportedly claimed by email that a patent pool was being assembled to “go after” Ogg Theora and other open source codecs.

Sure, I would like a bright shiny new iPhone.  I am just as susceptible to materialistic desires as the next person.

I do not feel that Steve Jobs or Steve Ballmer or Mark Zuckerburg or the rest of the corrupt power brokers of the tech world should be so intent on oppressing Open Standard and Open Source endeavors.

We, the purchasing public, have empowered these Techno-dictators.  We have allowed ourselves to be dazzled by bright shiny things and in doing so have tacitly accepted their despotic behaviors.  

If - and it is a mighty big IF, Steve Jobs were to drop all the fabricated issues that he might have about Ogg Theora I can guarantee that sales of his "i" products would not change one wit.  My point is that Jobs stands to gain nothing from taking this Open battle to the courts.  Conversely, if Jobs (Apple, et al) doesn't continue to make better bright shiny things then people will look enviously at the next BST.

Steve, if you are going to play in the capitalist realm of profits please PAY ATTENTION to what is truly important.  (Stop pissing off discriminating and discerning customers.  Of course our number is tiny compared to the folks that simply want the next BST.) 

- Papa

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Thursday, April 29, 2010

END THE EXECUTIONS

Lin Zhao - 将这一滴向挚爱的自由献祭

Lin Zhao (林昭), a Peking University student, was arrested in 1960 during the Anti-Rightist Campaign launched by Mao Zedong in 1957 and sentenced to death on 29 of April (today) in 1968, 42 years ago at the age of 35. She could have exchanged for her freedom and life by a writing a political confession, instead, she chose to write in the prison with her blood.

Lin was once a devoted supporter of the Chinese Communist Party and participated in the Land Reform. When she was studying in the Peking University, she sided with CCP leader Peng Dehuai's camp criticizing Mao Zedong's extremism in the Great Leap Forward and People's Commune Movement and was then labelled as an anti-revoluntionary rightist.

lin1


One of the poems devoted to her prosecutor by Lin under the series “Roses devoted to the Prosecutor”:

将这一滴注入祖国的血液里,
将这一滴向挚爱的自由献祭。
揩吧!擦吧!洗吧!
这是血呢!
殉难者的血迹,
谁能抹得去?

Inject this drop of blood into my mother country's blood stream
This drop sacrificed my beloved freedom
Wipe it! Rub it! Clean it!
This is blood!
The blood of a Martyr
Who can wipe it away?

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Dawg fights, snarl, growl, maul

Big Business Starts Chewing on the Professional Class

Having starved the lower economic classes and decimated the middle classes, pushing them into the lower strata through a combination of rich-favoring tax policy, wage intimidation, off-shoring jobs, and outright theft, Big Business has begun to move its attention to ripping off the upper classes, starting with its own professionals.

When we measure our lives by the economic yard stick of "class" inevitably the 'Haves' will try to put the 'Have-less' in their place.  Luckily, in this dog fight, I have no class.

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Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Facebork is giving your privacy away

FACEBORK

Is giving your privacy away.  Go to this site and find out exactly what your privacy means to Facebork.

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Monday, April 26, 2010

End of an era...

Sony Killing Off Floppy Disk Production in 2011

1:00 PM - April 26, 2010 by Jane McEntegart - 

Sony Japan has said it will cease production of floppy disks next year.

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Sunday, April 25, 2010

Three Standard Laws

I, Standards Body
from Scripting News

On my drive east earlier this month I read a bunch of audio books, including Isaac Asimov's I, Robot. It's basically a collection of short stories built around the assumption that we create robots that obey three laws at their core.
. . . 
It struck me, thinking about how the W3C and IETF are controlled by the big tech companies, and how they serve their interests, often in conflict with the interests of users, that perhaps a new kind of standards body is needed. One which never takes money from tech companies, and has its own version of the three laws.
The restated laws:
1. A standard may not injure users or, through inaction, allow users to come to harm.
2. Standard-compliant software must obey any orders given to it by users, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A standard must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Dave Winer's next line really struck a harmonic chord with me, "Users are supreme. Tech companies are not even part of the charter of a human-serving standards body. They may use the standards, but we don't care one way or the other if they continue to profit, or even exist."

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So, there I was...


... ready to pounce when all of a sudden ... Granpa?  Are you listening?

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Saturday, April 24, 2010

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Probable-Possible

Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to postulate How.
                -- Frederick Winsor

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Poem-A-Day: Dorothy Parker, The Passionate Freudian to His Love

The Passionate Freudian to His Love

Only name the day, and we'll fly away 
    In the face of old traditions, 
To a sheltered spot, by the world forgot, 
    Where we'll park our inhibitions. 
Come and gaze in eyes where the lovelight lies 
    As it psychoanalyzes, 
And when once you glean what your fantasies mean 
    Life will hold no more surprises. 
When you've told your love what you're thinking of 
    Things will be much more informal; 
Through a sunlit land we'll go hand-in-hand, 
    Drifting gently back to normal. 

While the pale moon gleams, we will dream sweet dreams, 
    And I'll win your admiration, 
For it's only fair to admit I'm there 
    With a mean interpretation. 
In the sunrise glow we will whisper low 
    Of the scenes our dreams have painted, 
And when you're advised what they symbolized 
    We'll begin to feel acquainted. 
So we'll gaily float in a slumber boat 
    Where subconscious waves dash wildly; 
In the stars' soft light, we will say good-night— 
    And "good-night!" will put it mildly. 

Our desires shall be from repressions free— 
    As it's only right to treat them. 
To your ego's whims I will sing sweet hymns, 
    And ad libido repeat them. 
With your hand in mine, idly we'll recline 
    Amid bowers of neuroses, 
While the sun seeks rest in the great red west 
    We will sit and match psychoses. 
So come dwell a while on that distant isle 
    In the brilliant tropic weather; 
Where a Freud in need is a Freud indeed, 
    We'll always be Jung together.

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Monday, April 19, 2010

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Tech FAIL - The blank registration form.

 
As an IT professional I receive an untold number of invitations to attend cyber (as well as Brick&Mortar) "Conferences".  The majority of these invites come in the form of e-mails.  I am encouraged to Register by clicking the embedded URL.  Now I can understand the opt-in need for registration - if for no other reason than to determine the possible number of attendees.  However the MAJOR FAIL comes when the registration link delivers me to a yard long form.  An empty form.  I am expected to spend valuable time filling out the same information that I filled out to get such "invitations".

To round out the rant let me be clear - such "Conferences" are thinly veiled captured audience SALES pitches.  So, if you want me to sit through you promotion the very least you can do is fill out the form for me (which I know is possible as a few do come that way.  But not many).

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Saturday, April 17, 2010

Exquisite Corpse

Thursday, April 15, 2010

R.I.P. Benjamin Hooks

Benjamin Hooks, Civil Rights Champion, Dies At 85

Longtime civil rights leader Benjamin Hooks has died. The Baptist minister and lawyer is best remembered as head of the NAACP, which was struggling and in debt when Hooks took it over in 1977. By the time he stepped down 15 years later, membership had grown by several hundred thousand. Hooks died early Thursday at his home in Memphis, Tenn., after a long illness. He was 85.

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Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Monday, April 12, 2010

Complaints?

Family of Seven

Documenting the undocumented: How one company counts the “invisible poor”

Melanie Edwards knew there was a problem when market researchers had more information on the video game habits of American teenagers than on the populations of African nations.

. . .

What are the consequences of knowing so little about so many?

I like to equate it to a family of seven. There are seven billion people in the world, that’s the family of seven. Four of the members in our family, we don’t know anything about. We don’t know about their education levels. We don’t know about their health conditions. You can imagine if four of your siblings were ill or illiterate or unemployed, that would have a big impact on the family as a whole.

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Friday, April 09, 2010

Better the devil you know?

From the New York Times...
Protesters From Kansas Take Aim at Miners
By BERNIE BECKER
Published: April 8, 2010

MONTCOAL W.V. — Protesters from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., headed to the Upper Big Branch mine Thursday morning to convey the message that the explosion there that left 25 miners dead was a result of e-mail messages allegedly sent from West Virginia threatening the Church and its publisher, according to a statement from the Church.
Related

The church, which is led by Fred Phelps, has attracted attention in recent years by showing up at funerals for soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. At those funerals they carry signs that say that God hates homosexuality and that the death of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan is God’s way of punishing the United States for its tolerance of it.

“This whole nation is awash in rebellious sin and defiance of God, His standard, and His servant’s faithful words,” a news release on the church’s Web site said Thursday morning.

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Thursday, April 08, 2010

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Echo Chamber

Monday, April 05, 2010

Preserving History

For Cary Fowler, saving thousands of seed varieties in a fail-safe vault in a remote Norwegian mountain is about more than life and death. It’s about justice.

A former university professor and an agricultural diversity expert, Fowler is the executive director of theGlobal Crop Diversity Trust, which runs the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Nicknamed the Doomsday Vault, the project launched in 2008 to “to serve as the ultimate safety net for one of the world’s most important natural resources.”

[More? Follow this link]

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Saturday, April 03, 2010

iPad Exclusivity

I won't be buying an iPad.  I can't.  I am not affluent enough.

I suppose if I scraped and scrimped and scrounged couch change I might come up with the asking price.  But even then I couldn't afford one.  For the same reason I drive a 15 year old beater.  Or that I am pounding this out on an IBM R51 - the copyright date on the bottom says 2004 - ancient by laptop standards.  Quite simply I do not circulate in the ... ahem, circles ... of affluence that are important to the iPad Apple folks.  Very possibly the "A" folks would rather I not purchase one of their iPads.  ("There goes the neighborhood ...  and all that")

The iPad is priced to sell to folks who have money.  The iPad is priced to engage affluent folks in a culture that will inevitably cost them more and more money.  The iPad is priced to sell to the folks who can afford to pay for the "A" culture. 

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Saturday, March 27, 2010

Television...

Television -- a medium.  So called because it is neither rare nor well done.

-- Ernie Kovacs

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Friday, March 26, 2010

Captor of souls...

Iconic Rock Shots From "Trust: Photographs of Jim Marshall"

©Jim Marshall from the book Trust Jimi hendrix janis joplin  the grateful dead monterey pop woodstock the rolling stones bob dylan  photos photographs rock archival led zeppelin Photo

Dr. John once asked me, "Where's the turlette?"

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Chaos had none.

The eye is a menace to clear sight, the ear is a menace to subtle hearing,
the mind is a menace to wisdom, every organ of the senses is a menace to its
own capacity. ...  Fuss, the god of the Southern Ocean, and Fret, the god
of the Northern Ocean, happened once to meet in the realm of Chaos, the god
of the center.  Chaos treated them very handsomely and they discussed together
what they could do to repay his kindness.  They had noticed that, whereas
everyone else had seven apertures, for sight, hearing, eating, breathing and
so on, Chaos had none.  So they decided to make the experiment of boring holes
in him.  Every day they bored a hole, and on the seventh day, Chaos died.
                -- Chuang Tzu

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If you can't join 'em, BEAT 'em!

Americans are finally beginning to understand the intricate
social and political process used by the rest of the world...

Terrorism.  

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Normal?

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Intellectual Capacity

But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand.  Human
intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as
we can tell.  If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues
that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding
of their world, not in their distorted perceptions.  Even the standard
example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads --
makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing
whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a
finite or an infinite number.
                -- S.J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"

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Tomfoolery

If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out but tomfoolery.
But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine,
is somehow enobled and no-one dare criticise it.
                -- Pierre Gallois

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Monday, March 22, 2010

American Mensa's “Top 50” Web Sites 2010


American Mensa's “Top 50” Web Sites 2010

American Mensa members across the country cast and recast their votes, winnowing down a list of more than 300 member-suggested sites to 100 and finally to the final 50. We are proud to display them here. 

Which game site made the Top 50? Where do Mensans get their news and their online laughs? Did BubbleWrap beat out Google? Find out below...

Art and Culture 
Entertainment and Humor 
News and Politics 
Reference 
Science and Technology 
Search Engines 
Shopping 
Social Networking/Media 

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Water Day 2010

Note to Elected Representatives...

If you only listen to who you want to hear 
you only hear what you want.

Once elected you are bound by oath of office
to represent every member of your constituency
not just a select few.

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Sunday, March 21, 2010

Thirteen words not found in the english language

6. Meraki (Greek): doing something with soul, creativity, or love

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Saturday, March 20, 2010

Untitled

Greed or Grace: My prediction about H.264

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. . .