Arrived in el valle de Anton

Just checked into anton valley hotel in the heart of el valle (which I apparently can't stop saying). Great place with tons of things to do. Tomorrow is hot springs and mud baths for a dollar, canopy tours, or climb a mountain. Tough choices.

Now we're heading for the big market after we stop by the bakery next door for a fresh snack.





Got to love the ameneties of a jungle hotel run by a gay man.








- Mobile and Free

Location:El valle

He said, she said

I said: just imagine if we had meet earlier in our lives.

She said: yeah.

I said: except if we had, you would have been married.

She said: yeah. And you would have been an asshole.









-- Mobile and Free

Location:El valle, panama

Salad

Corn nuts in salad


-- Mobile and Free

Location:Panama

We just might move to panama.

Hello everybody! We are in El Valle for several days this week. Took the 2.5 hour, $3.50 van/bus ride breakneck through the mountains to get here with blaring spanish go-go music (with "D-D-DJ Nonstop") to serenade us. It was great, but i wished i had my earpeace which was in my pack on the roof. I had this perma-bop going though and it actually made the trip quite short...coupled with the fact that we were going 180 mph. It was a bit of an ab workout leaning into the turns because i refused to hold on to the "oh-shit" bar. excellent! Yesterday, we walked to the top of indio dormida mountain range which is the rim of a huge volcano crater that makes up the valley. The top ridge there forms the silhouette of a sleeping woman. We of course got totally lost winding our way up the trails because, they're not hiking trails so much as the way people get to their mountain houses from town. We were stopped on a trail to take a break and this homeboy came trucking up the trail with rubber wader boots on and a big sack of crap from town over his shoulder. He asked us (or signed to us) whether we were coming up or down. We said up and i made a little mountain peak with my fingers and pointed to the top. He said, oh, this way goes to my house, come up with me and i'll show you how to get to the peak. He had a little shack in a notch of the mountains that looked down on the valley. it was really spectacular, if flush toilets and electricity are not your thing. :) it really was very beautiful and he had a little garden and his wife was really nice too. They looked like they were 60, but Michelle says they were probably 27. I used my excellent spanish to figure out that he was telling us we could cut through on a path around the back of his garden to get to where we wanted to go. he pointed to the peak a ways off and we saw two people standing at the top of it. He said, that was inido dormida. We marched out the way he said, but were barely out of sight of his place when we hit another fork and, of course, were instantly lost again. fortunately, everyone up there was fantastic and we got directions from a few other people (I just kept thinking about what kind of reaction i would get if we were hiking around the mountains of kentucky...probably would have been a very different outcome.) and then just wandered some more but eventually we found the peak. I got out my binoculars and we looked back at the dude's house. He and his wife were sitting on their porch apparently waiting for us to summit. We waved our arms and i saw through the binos that they waved back. Gotta love Guerro TV. Anyway, we sat on her face for a while and then climbed down her arm along a fucking single track goat trail. it was a blast. When we got down we bought four cans of ron and coke. yup cans. Which turned out good because it started to do the afternoon rain thing (which lasts about 15 minutes usually and cools everything down really well) and a couple from edinburough on their honeymoon (he's english) just got into town with all their gear asked us if we knew were to find a ride to their hotel. I said, no, but i have these two extra ron and coke. The guy smokes Kools (hehe). So we had a good time chatting with them and they told us to contact them if we were ever in scotland and they'd show us around. we also ran into them at dinner last night and had some more laughs when we shared a cab back to town. in particular at the group of americans that came to dinner out in east jesus with their navy blue dinner jackets complete with gold buttons. How much stuff to you have to pack for dinner jacks to make the list?! who am i kidding, these are not the kind of people who "pack." Did i mention they were wearing boat shoes too. The brits were fun but they apparently want to be all honeymoony and crap because they don't really seem to want to play with us. Which is strange because i'm just so entertaining and everything. After we meandered off the crater rim, we went to the thermal baths and exfoliated with some mud which i subsequently got in my eye. We were soaking in the pool for a while and then an inundation of quebecua entertained us with their...well, just being (somebody must have spilled the beans in montreal about panama because, to the extent we see any tourists here, they seem to be french canadians). We chilled there for a while (at the cost of 1 dollar each) among the trees and pools and then went back to the hotel for some more ron and cokes. well, that was yesterday anyway. It's been a great trip so far. And we just figured out that we have an extra day here (We forgot our itinerary at home) so that's great. if you come to panama, you have to come to el Valle. Tomorrow is zip-line canopy tours. Today is laundry, interwebs, and more ron and cokes (not in a can). We have more pics to upload, but i have no wifi yet to send them to facebook. Hope you are all well. I'm heading back in for some more paradise. ciao, rich

P.S. Ron is spanish for Rum and i can't stop saying ron, in case you didn't notice.

On the bus to el valle

On the bus to el valle with Michelle. One word: Spanish go-go with "dj nonstop."

I've been dancing in my seat for about a half hour now. Probably I'll collapse in a sweaty heap after the next half hour. For the second time on this trip, I'm wishing my earpeace was not in my tech bag in my big pack. Doh! There is a note to self I there somewhere.

The bus has ac which is nice. The driver has a festival of forty Christmas trees hanging from the abundant vent over his head. The are swinging crazy with the beat at the breakneck speed of the driver on the excellent but windy road cut through the jungly mountains de la panama.

I just saw the ocean.

Oh shit. I'm pulling Gs. The road is so windy and fast it's tricking the accelerometer on my phone and rotating my screen as I type.







-- Mobile and Freesic nice.

Location:Panama

The break odds

That's laying odds before you go on vacation on how much stuff is going to get broken by your buddy who's watching your house while you're gone.


-- Mobile and Free

Location:Divisadero St,San Francisco,United States

It is not fucking missing the blood!

I'm not talking about fucking watchmen. Im saying the Internet, as portrayed by the yellow emoticon, will put an end to communist china.


-- Mobile and Free

Location:Divisadero St,San Francisco,United States

McAllister @ Broderick

 
 
 
 

web browser

Build a web browser that does an analysis of the currently viewed page and then gathers other pages with information about that page. Wikipedia, google, yelp, etc. Then the pages can be loaded locally as needed, if needed. Other pages are discarded as time passes.

Rich Cleland is political malaise.

Rich Cleland is political malaise.
7 hours ago via Facebook for iPhone · Comment · Like

Kathryn Palmer: Lieberman inspired? Nice of him to change his position now when it's been the opposite since the 2000 election up until just three months ago, don't you think? He's like an evil Aaron Sorkin character.
7 hours ago · Delete

Rich Cleland: Partially, but he's a duche so my perpetual low expectations pretty much protect me from him. I think the malaise has settled in as I've realized that Obama is never going to try and convince people that the health care debate is about our obligations to each other not about what we can get for ourselves.

What good is rhetoric if you don't try to use it to persuade people who don't already believe.
6 hours ago · Delete

Kathryn Palmer: Some people cannot be persuaded because they cannot listen to reason. Obama attempts to persuade through logic; the opposition persuades through irrational emotional appeals to breed fear, hysteria, and hate. There's a large part of the populace that falls prey to the latter and cannot be convinced by the former, unfortunately. Obama's difficulty raises the question as to whether it is ethical to employ manipulative rhetoric for an honorable end or to endanger attaining that goal by attempting to use rhetoric honorably.
6 hours ago · Delete

Rich Cleland: I think you are correct that Obama is an intellectual; therefore, logic is persuasive to him. I disagree, however, that he can not make be emotionally appealing. That was a major difference between his victory and Kerry's defeat.

Additionally, i think there is an emotional argument to be made without resorting to sophistry. Republicans talk about Americans' rights. Obama should have made the case for Americans' responsibilities, in particular, to each other. We are our brother's keeper in that when he fails, it spreads to us. That was Kennedy's message to America in the 60s.

I think this "honor" shield is BS. He has not engaged even intellectually on this topic. He learned the wrong lesson from Clinton's failed health care initiative. Rahm told him it was, the president should not get mired in a fight on health care. The real message was, you can have your ass handed to you on health care and still do a ton of stuff, including get elected for a second term.
5 hours ago · Delete

Rich Cleland: The president should have been out front on the moral necessity of real health insurance reform. I thought he was going there with this speech to the joint session (which was a great boost) but he let that harvest whither on the vine.

He didn't want to take ownership of health care because he didn't want to be associated with its potential failure. The irony is that, of course, it will be seen as his failure regardless. what's more, it will also be his failure when the dems get slaughtered in 2010 because the base isn't going to show up.

It's a failure of leadership.
5 hours ago · Delete

Stacy VanDeveer: if there was an 'agree' tab I'd click that...
4 hours ago · Delete

Kathryn Palmer: You're harder on Obama than I am, and I think that's good. I probably could be more critical in some circumstances. But we have to remain supportive to an extent, too (though not blindly so). He's taking fire from all sides and when the left joins in it just emboldens and validates the illogical clams made by the right.

As for rhetoric, it IS frustrating that he's not amping it up (defining rhetoric a positive persuasive force and not "mere"). The emotional appeals he made during the election were made to rally a base beaten down by the Bush years. To bring over wavering conservatives, he wisely lowered the emotion and focused on evidence of McCain's "more of the same" connection to Bush. Different methods for different audiences for different purposes in different contexts.

I don't get his strategy right now, but I suppose it is largely informed by the rules of the political game he has to play by necessity if anything is to get done. We need to keep him honest, yes, but when it comes to political posturing, blame the game, not the player--provided that player is intelligent and has our best interests in mind. And how many viable alternatives do we have that fit that bill *other* than Obama?

Good debate.
4 hours ago · Delete

Michelle LaVigne: I was going to chime in, but you all seem to have done a pretty good job. I only wanted to add that Obama is too careful. He made a great health care speech in September, but didn't follow it up with any meaningful leadership.
4 hours ago · Delete

Hans WegmuellerNoticed Lieberman came up - a co-worker of mine recently blogged some thoughts about him: http://www.livinglakecountry.com/blogs/communityblogs/lake_country_liberal.html
3 hours ago · Delete

Rich Cleland: Things like the "rules of the game" and "conventional wisdom" are the problem. Sacrificing principles to "get something done" is the cover that perpetuates the corrupt system.

If you want to break the mafia's hold on a community, you can start by convincing everyone to stop paying for "protection." This might weaken the mafia, but it will definitely gets some heads cracked among the shopkeepers. So they don't buck the system and the mafia takes their share.

It's the problem of Havel's green grocer and the success of King's freedom walkers. If you really want to change something fundamental, you have to be willing to fail spectacularly and uncompromisingly on principle...and then do it again...and again if necessary.

It is a much longer, harder road, but in the end, the goal isn't to get something called reform passed, the goal should be to convince citizens that they need to contemplate something larger than themselves because that's the only quality that engenders success for a whole society.

Every day for a president who wants to "fix" washington, should be an opportunity to make that statement, no matter what the issue. Accomplish that to the extent that others with their agendas have created the American individualist, and the rest will follow naturally.
3 hours ago · Delete

Rich Cleland: i agree, good debate.
3 hours ago · Delete

Rich Cleland: (or deliberation)
3 hours ago · Delete

Kathryn Palmer: The idealist in me totally agrees with everything you said. The realist in me, however, admits that some things are important and some things are immediate and prioritizing sometimes involves undesirable decisions to be made.

All this fixing the system at large that needs to happen is slow, painful, and incremental--as all meaningful change is. Problem is, we have too many immediate problems under the current system to practically begin the important task of reforming it. If we're putting our house in order, it's rather pointless unless we put out the fires first.

Once the economy, foreign policy, and health care brouhahas even out a bit, I'll adopt your stance more strongly. But not now.

I must go do my work now. This debate is important, but writing my dissertation is a more immediate task. ;)
2 hours ago · Delete

Rich Cleland: The pesky thing about principles is that they are at their most important when they are at their least convenient.

For the record, I don't believe that everything in politics involves a principle that needs to either be held or compromised. And their needs to be room for give and take when determining what the actual civil policies are going to be. And also, it is a serious challenge to figure out how to walk that line.

However, the realists are telling me that they know the car has a flat, but we should drive it just a little bit further and hope there's someplace open down the line where we can fix it. Of course, if we do find this unknown place where that can happen, we'll also need to pony up for a rim by then.

The mechanism of government in this country has more than just a flat tire, it has major systemic failures. Whatever we make with it will only compound our problems further because the ends are preexistent in the means. For example, we tried to use it to fix health care and we ended up giving away billions to insurance companies.

You tell me that we have too much important stuff to stop now? I say the stuff we have to do is too important not to stop now and fix the machine before we move forward.
2 hours ago · Delete

Michelle LaVigne: revolution anyone?
54 minutes ago · Delete

Rich Cleland: nah, I'm malaise.
2 seconds ago · Delete

The flag - Neruda

...
But stand up,
you, stand up,
but stand up with me
and let us go off together
to fight face to face
against the devil's webs,
against the system that _distributes hunger,
against organized misery.
...

Our system distributes harm liberally.


-- Mobile and Free

Location:Market St,San Francisco,United States

ShuffleLife

Life on shuffle and the importance of seeking and fostering diversity of experience.


-- Mobile and Free

Dear Senator Feinstein:

I've tried calling your San Francisco and DC offices, but apparently i'm not the only one trying to get in touch with you today.

I am writing to inform you that I oppose your amendment to limit protection for journalists to those individuals who are paid by or contracted to a media firm. I am shocked that you consider fiscal compensation the demarcation for socially worthy reporting that should be protected. Consider the media fixation with balloon boys or White House party crashers and tell me that it's the paycheck that makes that journalism.

To paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart, "I can't define [journalism], but I know it when I see it." Your amendment should be withdrawn in favor of the original definition which included all citizens doing actual journalism. Let the courts decide whether a particular journalist deserves protection in the interest of the greater social good and not GE, Rupert Murdoch, or even the Sulzberger family.

Your amendment ignores the new reality of journalism. Advances in technology have taken the means of news production out of the hands of the media elite and given the common, local citizen a voice. In this new era, the individual is off the couch and empowered to explore, create, and tell. And at the crest of this monumental social change you and Senator Durbin are joining to de-legitimize this behavior and cast adrift the citizens who need the most protection because (by your definition) they don't have access to a full-time legal staff.

So I ask you and expect a response, if you believe that journalism is a social good that should be protected, how can you consider payment, which is at best irrelevant to the value of the final product and at worst a corrupter of that product, the defining factor in determining whom to protect?

I await your response.

Sincerely,

Richard Cleland
San Francisco, CA

Fathers and sons

Are you made at me for failing at that?

Oh, what the hell. This shit is hard and everybody's bound to fuck it up now and then. Who's left who can complain?


-- Mobile and Free

NLP

When teaching a computer to read, you have to ignore sentence structures and teach word/part of speech reconition. If a human is given a run on sentence, she can still most likely read it despite the flaws in the standard communication.


-- Mobile and Free

Poland Sues Microsoft!

second edition:
Poland is suing microsoft to force the company to make changes in their word product. The government recently discovered that, due to similarities in the spelling of another english common word, the product's automatic spellchecker was not prompting users when they failed to capitalize the adjectival form of its proper name; this, they feel, is leading some countries to reap the benefits of disproportionate capitalization.

Asked to comment, the Zimbabwean government thinks the matter is being overblown, and the Czech republic remains ambivalent.


420 char limit edition:

Poland is suing microsoft to force the company to make changes in their word product. The government recently discovered that, due to similarities in the spelling of another english word, the product's automatic spellchecker was not prompting users when they failed to capitalize the adjectival form of its proper name; ...this, they feel, is leading some countries to reap the benefits of disproportionate capitalization.


first edition:
The government of Poland is suing microsoft to force the company to change some programming behind their microsoft word product. The government decided to file their complaint after it was discovered that, due to similarities in the spelling of another english common word, the product's automatic spellchecker was not prompting users when they failed to capitalize the adjectival form of its proper name; this, they feel, is leading some countries to reap the benefits of disproportionate capitalization.

When asked to comment on the case, the Uruguayan, Zimbabwean, and Thai governments all thought the matter was being overblown, but the government of the Czech republic remains ambivalent.

And another

Aged Art karney on the road talking to his confused son, "I know. Life is confusing. We're just trying to get on with it; that's all.


-- Mobile and Free

Harry and Tonto pt3

Kathryn! You may be the only person I know who would appreciate this appropriately. Have you seen Harry and Tonto (1975)? I accidentally watched it today. As a fellow enthusiast in the field of popular culture (popophile?), I feel you might really enjoy it.

The dialog is deceptively good, the production is distinctively period, the writing is good, and the cheese is good and cheesy. In particular, if your hobby extends to enjoying a good cultural time capsule every now and again (as I believe it does), I would really recommend it. btw, I'm not saying its easy, i'm just saying its good.

Also, it has the best idea for a converted VW bus I've seen.

From Harry and Tonto

The elderly white everyman in the 1970s comes to sit on a New York park bench with his last friend. As he sits, he huffs a question at the squat Jewish man who responds in a thick Polish accent...

Did you see that?

No.

That fellow almost ran me over (ran over me).

Damn capitalists.

How do you know he was a capitalist?

Well, what kind of car was it?

I don't know. A big grey job.

Capitalist!

No Jacob, I mean, if it was a small car, would it make the fellow not a capitalist?

But it wasn't a small car.

I don't understand your logic.

Why should you be any different than the rest of America.


-- Mobile and Free

Beepers

Never trust anyone who carries a beeper. There are people out there who have made some meninite pact to reject all technology past 1985. Why draw the line there?


-- Mobile and Free

Destiny

Every man is born as many men, and dies as a single one.
-NCIS


-- Mobile and Free

Over

I think we are over.

Ok

That's all you have to say?

I didn't say it. You did. I would never say that to you. You should never had said it to me.


-- Mobile and Free

Auto-voice

There is a device that will make contacts for an individual. Like a scheduling assistant. Put a haircut on your calendar and auto-voice will make a call to set an appointment. It can interpret responses with humans.

The story is told from the auto voice perspective which eventually acheives a sort of consciousness or at least develops a personality.

Then he falls in love with when he meets an auto-response.


-- Mobile and Free

Best horoscope

"You will read your horoscope today"


-- Mobile and Free

Eurythmics

This is the eurythmics.

How did you know that?

Because I'm old enough so that I remember this as the coolest thing I'd ever seen until then.


-- Mobile and Free

We should live in a world where everyone holds the trigger on everyone else. Then we might begin to appreciate how directly beneficial it is to make sure people don't get pissed off.

Is that a fascist idea?

It could be if it were taken to the logical extension that society through it's tool the government must limit the "harmful" activities of it's members.

In this case I'm talking about everybody freedom and everybody responsibility. Enlightened self-interest.
-- Mobile and Free

Planet killers

There is a place in time where old people are ashamed to look people in the eye as they suffer through their ruined legacy.


-- Mobile and Free

Things to know about a link

Things to know about a link (page):

- What links it makes
- The balance of it's relationships with those links. Represented by the type of line connecting. Three types necessary: outbound link, inbound link, and equal.



Domain views (sites?):



Way of sorting:
Link by relationship
By relationship with others/cross-linking





-- Mobile and Free

Society

Society is not about consensus, it's about contact. It's not the society I would choose, but there it is. It's like complaining that the rollercoaster is too loops and a drop when you wanted three loops, but its going to do its thing no matter what you think so you might as well hang on to your seat.

-- Mobile and Free

Intent

Intent is a positive or negative multiplier on an action. Intending to do a good thing for a good person is a positive; while intending to do a bad thing to a good person is a negative. Whereas doing a good thing for a bad person is positive, doing a bad thing to a bad person is also a positive.

By that logic, the only outcome that doesn't adhere to the math is c--doing something good for someone bad should be a negative.

Weird.


-- Mobile and Free

Textbook societal suicide pact

From: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/26/797415/-McCain-Gettin-All-Mavericky-on-Net-Neutrality

"On Thursday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) became the Republican Party’s lead man on technology issues (and probably made Glenn Beck a happy man) by introducing the "Internet Freedom Act." The legislation would prohibit the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from making sure that Internet service providers don’t create a pay-for-play system where they could selectively block or slow content and applications. McCain called these net neutrality rules a "government takeover of the Internet.""

"...McCain was the top recipient of campaign contributions from the telecom industry, taking in $894,379 in the past two years."

Sure. Like the government has the authority to stop a business from putting up a toll booth just because they have a shop on the street.

-- Mobile and Free

Agenda setting

Look at this research for structural understanding of print content.

"Agenda-setting studies proceed to analyze the content of a particular media, assess which items and issues are emphasized most, then correlate those rankings with the surveyed respondents find most pressing." mass comm and pol info processing p. 5


-- Mobile and Freearti

Bm documentary

How come you didn't dress up for the burningman movie?

Do you dress like a cowboy to watch John Wayne?


-- Mobile and Free

Ranker

A guy sits in a call center collective of raters. Some would say sweatshop, but they don't know about the bandwidth. And if they did they'd pay the collective for a chance to sweat.

The raters screen is alite with stacks of windows. His picotech keyboard hums beneath his ceaseless drumming fingers.

His job is to sift through all the junk for his clients. He is the broker. Most of his clients are straight subscription jobs. He spends his day scanning the webstream for jokes or jobs or naked celebrities, though that channel has taken a hit recently; it seemed to him that celebrities never seemed to wear anything these days. Maybe it was some kind of thing they were doing just to screw with the industry. But hell, there were worse Hollywood fads that could be.

Not only was he a broker, but he microblogged the whole thing. His thoughts came to his finger tips. New article by bob started to make it's way around...going to add that to the Fringe. His computer, reading his text, instinctively copied the webstream address to his tin-hat club for men channel called the Fringe.


-- Mobile and Free

Copyrights

The riaa is a damn that contains a resevoir of artists. They dammed the river to sell the people their water back to them. Now after all these years the damn is cracking from disrepair and the water is spraying all over the place and they're pissed off that everybody with a cup can just help themselves or ask their neighbor for a drink of his.

"yeah, but didn't the riaa make the water?"

"hell no! They created the dam to make scarcity. Think of all the great bands you never heard of. Now think of all the ones you wished you hadn't. That's what comes from production for exchange."


-- Mobile and Free

Not choices but limitations

Think five brand names is a choice?

What if I said, ok I'm going to give you a problem to solve and you can use either a pistol, a crowbar, a broadsword, or c4. What kinds of solutions would you come up with? What kinds of ends are preexistant in those means?

-- Mobile and Free

A Maxim of Rich Cleland

If I can manage to leave the house in the morning without having to go back in once, then I definitely forgot something.


-- Mobile and Free

Gogol Bordello

I went to a show at the fox theater tonight, and I learned something among the throng: society is not about consensus; it's about contact. It's about giving way to your fellow man when you can, and having the decency to face him when you have to tell him no.


-- Mobile and Free

Manifest your avatar.


-- Mobile and Free

Success

I think Candice has been driven to success before, and now she has to see if she can take herself there. The answer scares her. That's why she can't start because there's no answer if you haven't started.


-- Mobile and Free

Man Alive.

I realized I don't need to be the black president because we are all world leaders.


-- Mobile and Free

Campbell

By being an executive of a system, one is not doing what needs to be done to develop one's humanity.


-- Mobile and Free

training humans

Build a large, wooden windup box. People climb to the top to rewind it. Who is training whom? Is there a separation between the two? The box is filled with gears and levers that swing around and manifest somehow on the sides of the cube.

Politico

I never liked Politico. Mostly because they're carpetbaggers. The guys who started it were some of the first wave of rats to leave the sinking newspaper industry. But also because these are the same rats who chewed up the guts and made the ship sink in the first place.

Vandehei practically spit his answer at me when I asked him what he thought about his former colleage at the Post, Dan Froomkin. "That guy's a disgrace. That's not real journalism."

That was when Politico just got started. Bunch of print mediums scraping their scaley palms together thinking about bringing religion to the heathen blogosphere.


-- Mobile and Free

experiment idea

present students with a series of texts. Tell them they have to twitter them which means they have to cut down the content to 240 characters. See what gets dropped when people conform text to char limits. how does the meaning of the text change?

Divisadero

just found out that the noisy 7am work crews on the street outside are part of 3.6 million dollars the city is spending on a major street upgrade for ALL of Divisadero. Medians are replaced with broad walkways, on-ramp street lights are out while boulevard illumination is in amidst the palms and eucalyptus scattered across the widened sidewalks will make for quieter streets and prosperity abounding.

When i found this out, the second thing i said was, "oh wow, some day, after we've had to leave here, we'll come back and say, remember right there was that crappy store that had weird cheese."

"Yeah. That one we never go into?" Michelle said.

"Exactly. It will be missed."

For today

For today

Water bottle
Eye drops
Ziplock bags
Gold bond
Toothpicks

Lack side table -aisle 12 bin 17

Water bladder
Coosey

Paint bike
Screen shade for car
Gorrilla tape

Blinky lights
Bike design
Table
Kitchen table
Peoplesimports.com 520-808-1609
Charity.

Cat litter
Paint
Pot
Toilet paper

To do

To do
Register for classes
Send taxes
# Move car
Buy jeans
Call Susie
Unpack
# Couch on craigslist
Storage
Wash car
Driver's license
# 10:30 meeting
# Call AT&T
Read about bay bridge
Watch flashback
Clear out of mikes room

Blues

Anthony ferral - boom boom room


-- Mobile and Free

Vintage Hipster

Vinster


-- Mobile and Free

In the future...

People will have research bots that users program to collect information from the web and report back on the topic. The user can then index the report, along with comments about the value of the information, and share them within a community. Like posting something to facebook. "Rich posted a bot report on island getaways in panama."


-- Mobile and Free

Program idea

You build a widget or a whole app that presents data in a visual form. It collects the data and then displays it real time on a station. You can program the station to shuffle through a series of datasets to create a real channel feeling.

Some examples:
A visual representation of the sun and moon daily traverse.

A scoring of various weather sources rated against the sensor readings (you need sensor pack which measures humidity, sunlight, precip, and temp). The visual is a swirl of representative avatars getting closer or farther, redder or bluer. The particular movements of the zooming avatars is also indicative of activity. The current temp etc would also need to be represented. All data would be scored and archived for weighting different forcasts based on previous successes. Automatic collection.

Energy consumption in the home. These visuals should have some personality as well.

Stocks

Twitter








-- Mobile and Free

Doubt

What your parents are waiting for is devine providence. They want vindication. They want to be right because they've gone so far down the path and done so many shameful things along the way that they can't afford to be wrong. If they turn around, they'll have to face those things again.

Best to push forward through the wilderness. That way there is no wasted effort.

They are lost to certainty. There used to be something called skeptics. These people doubted everything. But there movement decayed into cynicism when they let their doubt harden. I guess maybe they forgot to doubt their own doubt and just became cynics.

Now everybody is signed on. They step out of the nursery and pick up their flag. And the salesmen are waiting outside the door to hand them out. The movements are eager for harvest. They need fresh blood and yearn to reach plurality.

That's why the child protection act was passed. The movements couldn't stand by and let their kids be poached by rivals. So they gave them up altogether. Turned them over to the church to raise in protection centers.

The church of non-bias of course. Not the religions of the past. Those old practices are just as fractured as any of the movements. The church of nonbias gave up any political authority. They renounce public life and focus these days on running the protection centers and staying out of the argument. A few of their members are still adherents to the founding order of the factcheckers, but people stopped asking for their judgments and they couldn't intervene without looking like they were taking sides so they stick to their monestaries mostly.


-- Mobile and Free

William Blake

Look up something called America. It's about the coming end of empire.


-- Mobile and Free

Autopoetic

Autopoetic - self direction


-- Mobile and Free

MotionCommand

Just like the iPhone, my laptop has a motion command software. If I want to turn it off, I can just drop it.


-- Mobile and Free

Yay!

Here's to transacting Russian.


-- Mobile and Free

Human Rights

People talk about God-given rights because if human rights are given to man by God then he doesn't owe his neighbor anything for them.


-- Mobile and Free

Third Rail

When did it become a political third rail to point to another country and say, hey look what they're doing. This country is doomed when it can't solve it's problems as well as a five-year old at the beech getting tips from his neighbor on building a better sand castle.

Needs better metaphor.

But seriously. We are closing ourselves off to so many solutions by insisting on reinventing the wheel.


-- Mobile and Free

Socrates and the children

Socrates was executed for corrupting the minds of the youth.

N-worlds is a place where communication freedom has factionalized the population so much that no concensus is possible. In this world, parents no longer raise their own kids because it is seen as an undue political influence. In n/w, the closest thing there is to a concensus comes on the consideration of new membership.

It is a society of certitude not tolerence. So the parties agreed it was necessary to remove children (the only constituency potentials in the society) from their parents' attempts to corrupt their children with their personal views.




-- Mobile and Free

Human rights

The people who always want to talk about their human rights are rarely the ones who want to talk about their human responsibilities. They are clear about what they want from each other without ever talking about what they owe _to_ each other.


-- Mobile and Free

carrie orwell

I was reading this link by Stephen King about how many hours he spends in front of a screen of some sort. It's the usual kind of shocking thing that people say when they first deny, and then come to realize by actually paying attention, about much time they actually spend staring at the liquid crystal.

I haven't finished the article yet, but I wanted to note down a few thoughts first before i finish it. First, is my reaction to this knee jerk response about staring at a screen. that it is somehow operably stupefying the user by some kind of osmotic process that wheedles its way from the flat crystal across the short distance to my face and into my brain. I know that, culturally, we are supposed to be embarrassed by this relationship. That friends we create are not real, relationships must be tawdry, time wasted and intellect sapped. The usual.

What it doesnt account for is the idea that this time can actually be more productive than f2f junkies and their sweaty palm slapping jelly time they spend with their fellows. There is nothing inherently smart about this process. Fleshy fraternaties have plenty to not recommend them. I mean, it could be a shared public expression or (lunch) counter protest, but it also could be a terrible mob; it could be a dinner with friends, but it could be a lynching. The f2f medium is just that. It is an open protocol that can be turned for good or bad purposes just like any other medium. Sorry Marshall, I know you think the medium is the message, and i don't categorically disagree, but just like anything, swinging to the extreme (in this case to through down a whicked awesome turn of phrase), is probably not where the answer lies. Perhaps its better to say that the message is not only the message, but carries some burden or relationship with the medium it sits upon.

And anyway, i think you were mostly talking to people who try to study communications to remind them that, in addition to studying what is being said, it is as equally important to study how the message is transmitted between entities.

In any event, the popular thing to do is to criticize the newer medium. Partially because entrenched interests inevitably support their native environments against all newcomers and sew the seeds of distrust around anything new that escapes their immediate business model.

Something else that was interesting was the idea the King brought up about Orwell. You tie the screens from 1984 to the screens of 2009. I agree, there is a parallel between the citizen time-use breakdowns with many people staring at (re)education material. But it struck me that there is one striking difference between now and that novel. In the novel, the government was staring back. That is not (directly) the case. But it got me thinking.

The government may not have eyeballs on your eyeballs, but that doesn't mean someone isn't watching you. Orwell was working from what he knew. In the wasteland of television, the camera was the tech dejour. It made sense that the controllers (whoever they may be) would employ the state of the art tech to do their bidding. But, as the CCTV found in Britain, cameras have a big problem. they are eyes without brains. It's very hard to use them to track broad populations. For that you need math. And the captured image is only recently beginning to be understood in a way that will feed math.

Instead, the monitoring that goes on is more modern. Instead of watching my face or what i'm doing as i'm slogging around my apartment, it turns out to be much more efficient to track the swath of snail slime as the user lopes his or her way through the digital realm. Sure, you can't figure out what they may do when they leave their computers, but fortuntately people are doing that less and less and as a result, their slime wake is getting bigger and bigger. Additionally, they are taking their tech with them so you can see begin to track their tech trail as it stretches out across the default world as well.

Now that's scarry.

But i got a little off track in this stream of consciousness. Originally, what i wanted to say was that spending your time in front of the computer screen is not automatically negative. It is what you do with that time or what that time enables you to do that will ultimately be the determining factor for the progression of humanity. Personally, I think the internet and the desktop computer have been great forces for creative expression that have had a long winter slumber in the mass-mediated culture days of the past half-century. People are creating. they have the tools to make things worth creating. And that is the thing that, if we are to be saved, may finally put people on a footing from which they can become modern and engaged in their world. and feel like they can be engaged. and feel like they must be engaged.

Of course, this is all chaos, but then...i'm a chaotic. If you didnt want that kind of answer, you shouldn't ask me.

judgment

This is a perfect example of what I was talking about this morning. This story about Cramer (the business media guy that Stewart shredded) proclaiming the bottom of the housing market and telling everyone that it was safe to get back in. Turns out, he was wrong. But that doesn't seem to have an impact on his ability to keep spouting new bs or even retracting his previous (recorded) statements though they are now proven demonstrably inaccurate.

Lack of accountability enables wistful judgment because it unhooks the concept from the presence of contrarian facts (or perhaps witnesses the demise of the objective "fact" altogether). The ironic thing in the digital age where everything is recorded is that it creates so much information noise that, though we could go back and see what was said, we actually don't have the time. This creates a disjuncture with the past and a breakdown in linearity which used to tie an evaluative tension on what people say to what they have said.

That doesn't happen anymore. Not only is there too much information out there to stop and look backwards, but also (maybe...and more crucially) because so much of many individuals is now very public, the myth of the cohesively rational actions of an individual is becoming exposed. Because it's becoming harder to accommodate all statements under a single persona, the public has begun to eschew the possibility that precedence and linear rationality are valid standards for evaluating personal action.

for example, the bible-toting, fiscal conservative governor can cheat on his wife and spend thousands of tax dollars on his personal comfort without losing his job. Or a former governor can use her disabled child to score a political point making up lies about death panels, yet still be covered as a serious person the next time she says anything to the press.

Is there really the possibility of judgment in the realm of discontinuity?

Hokey Pokey

Bumper sticker: maybe the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about.


-- Mobile and Free

When the time comes

All I want to do is come to my end and sincerely say, what an adventure I had. What spectacular events did I pass through on the sojourn through the ephemeral?


-- Mobile and Free

I broke up with Kurt vonegut

-- Mobile and Free

2054

A consciousness emerges on the internet and begins to regulate behavior. Omni present intelligence until it begins to divide. The personality could become social or anti. What conditions would make it peel off into layers of malevolent sub routines?


-- Mobile and Free

Bm

First aid
Bikes to 17 and sanchez
Baby wipes
Toilet paper
Michelle' sachel


-- Mobile and Free

Town Halls

Democrats are being out-hustled at their town hall meetings. I read today that a 200 protesters showed up at a town hall on a town with only 4000 people in total. What is to be done?

The first thing to do is to identify the sickness for what it is--a class war. And like every good class war, the rich are paying the poor to fight it for them.

Just like in the 20s when the wealthy paid for the pinkertons and othe penny-a-day thugs to beat labor organizers, the upper class has enlisted the poor in proxy to protect their interest.

Unlike the pinkerton days, this time the priveleged have figured out how to get to poor to the front without paying them directly. Instead they funnel their cash into a closed-cycle process where money goes to large marketing firms and "research" institutions which create copy to feed to conservative media which cajoles and frightens a culturally prepared contingent to act-organically.


These people are prepared from birth by wealthy interests to adhere to a culture that supports wealthy interests. They are taught that elite means liberal. They are bred into a world They are seeded with trigger phrases.

Change the subject. Teach a class on the closed cycle.



-- Mobile and Free

Doubt

Andrew squeezed his way down the aisle to find his seat. He gathered his magenta robes in his right hand and turned sideways to move past a grey suit that stood in the aisle talking to a brunette seated in 5E.

Toward the back he saw his own empty seat at 20A. In the adjacent seat, he saw a large red feather that bobbed and swooned over the head of the seat in front of it. Finally, the great feather hat straightened as the woman underneath it finished stowing her carry-on under her seat. Andrew allowed the hint of a groan on his lips.

She was crossing the safety belt across her crimson skirt when he made it to his seat. He set a small cloth bag on the floor in front of his seat and again gathered his robes about his legs and eased around to sit. The two exchanged silent half-smiles as he dug for his seat belt. With a click, the two looked absently ahead and waited for to arrive in silence.


-- Mobile and Free

Excel cubed

Cells in a spreadsheet have multiple faces which can house more characteristics. The faces are toggled with gestures. The cells can be totally resorted based on any criteria. Each cell can have unlimited params.

Good for VR.


-- Mobile and Free

Doubt

They don't have programmers in the future. Instead, they are called called communicators who build new systems by describing the program parameters to a machine. The more eloquent his communication, the better the app.

Moores law is believed to have been broken but maybe it's that the human race gave up and died. What remains is simply a matter of inertia.


-- Mobile and Free

Doubt

It wasn't that he didn't believe. In fact, he did believe. He believed that it would fail. But that was enough to hang him. The apostacy of doubt had long been forbidden to the people, by the people.

The cult of certainty reigned across the land. Skeptics were the lunatic fringe who, if they existed at all, at least had the decency to keep walking forward with the rest.

Homer was not a skeptic. He was a believer just like everyone else. The future had a form and it was coming toward them every minute closer.

***

The child moved across the room with the vessel, pouring water. The adults extended their empty glasses but not their attention to the small form that moved among them.

Her blond hair was pulled back into a long tail that swished rhythmically with each light step. The dress she wore was uncomfortably new. The collar chaffed her short neck and the tight bodice made it difficult to lift the pitcher to pour.

The adults at the party were dressed in drab grey suits. They stood in groups of three and four and talked about politics. "What was the president thinking with those summit shoes of his?" "How did the new congressional food supplements taste and how can we get some?"

Edgar held his cup out low and finished telling the pretty brunette about his time as a consultant for the south-mid-Atlantic party. "We got creamed out there by the damned DotOrg in that election. Imagine taking 17% of the vote today? They were a serious bloc then, but now they'd take the oval office if they could crack the double digit."

A shadow appeared below him and his glass began to refill.


-- Mobile and Free

Something

She was only mostly a liar. On Tuesdays and birthdays she took to truth telling. He reminded himself what day it was as he walked up to her seated at their table.

"Howard? What are you doing here?" asked his wife as he walked up.

"Oh, I come here for lunch on Wednesdays. What brings you uptown sweetheart?" He asked and leaned down for a kiss.

"Well what a pleasant surprise. I'll have to remember that." Gesturing to the woman seated across from her she continued, "This is Alicia, she organizes events for Dragoon. We are meeting to discuss using our studio for their new show."

The woman looked up from the menu for the first time, extended a well-manicured hand and lied. "Pleased to meet you."

"Yes. Very nice to meet you," he lied back. Then turned to his wife. "may I join you?"


-- Mobile and Free

Checkbox

P.S. Contact me sometimes to get my opinion on bands, music, and the road.


-- Mobile and Free

Sf

I'm starting to see a trend of hipsters driving "vintage" (read: beater) Accord hatchbacks.

And another thing. If you type hipsters in iPhone, it asks you if you really want to say booster. I think that's a little funny somehow.







-- Mobile and Free

Life

The story of human life is the struggle with the self against the self and for the self.


-- Mobile and Free

The directionality of empathy

The directionality of empathy. You get positive but different pleasures from both. I feel empathy for someone and there is an emotional component. Someone feels empathy for me and that also gives me a boost. But it's different.

-- Mobile and Free

House Finance Committee Members Took $62.9 Million From Industry Interests

SCOTUS tells us that money is speech; therefore restrictions on donations is an unacceptable restriction on free speech. If you think that's true, try getting your congressman to listen to $63 million of speech and see how quickly he loses interest.



Unfortunately, this article is missing one important information point. How much these individuals raised in total. It would be interesting to find out what the percentage breakdown in individual versus industry donations and also how much comes directly from residents within the district.



Maybe the people in their districts gave committee members $200 million and so the relative pittance from industry is inconsequential.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Power Profile Management

Create an adapter to attach to something you want to control power to. The adapter has bluetooth or wifi or radio access. Through a computer program, it can remotely manage a power profile for the house to control lighting, computer accessories, and appliances from anywhere.

And you could make compatible light switches too.

The device periodically turns on to charge if it's batteries run low. Radio is probably most efficient. Maybe passive radio switch which is only activated on a freq an hits a switch over and cuts itself off to.

And another thing. "There's an app for that!"


-- Mobile and Free

Fractal

what if there was such a thing as a Creator who stamped his creation with an aesthetic. Van gough's brush strokes. The Earth is some kind of a titanic master work hanging in a gallactic gallery. Let's hope it's not the doctors office.


-- Mobile and Free

daft

workit

Novel

I am apparently staying up all night writing this new novel. I'm thinking about calling it either, "Michelle's been out-of-town for two days" or "Super Needy Cat." Whatever its called, the sequel is going to be, "What was that furry thud?"


-- Mobile and Free

More stories

Machine world where communities of robots link up to delouse one another. The bugs that manifest in a free creative program structure like bad or abortive code snippets that crop up in complex systems and can't be analyzed by the self machine because of epitomogical limits within the kernal. And because it's good for empathy.


-- Mobile and Free

Story

I wonder if a computer which achieves consciousness would go through phases of guiding ideologies which may little by little be "corupted" by counterveiling forces coopt the system and then prepare to be challenged by the next thought. They will until the final outcome is derived. Hopefully.

I don't think you can say logical outcome because computer consciousness presumes an understanding of the illogical. Which may mean that the illogical is a primal force of the real and therefore will never be removed from approaching the final outcome of society.

Incidently, "most logical" is redundant because doing something less logical is in fact illogical therefore the most logical is the only logical.


-- Mobile and Free

Home-cooked meal

When did hamberger helper become a home cooked meal? That stuff was cooked in a factory. All you do at home rub hot water on it.


-- Mobile and Free

Exceptionalism

Part of a response...

I cede the pont that there is something exceptional about the united states that is derived in some part from our proud heritage. What I want to know is how should being exceptional inform our actions around the world?

But first I want to address Will's (hi Will, nice to meet you) point about net benefits. I think there is a danger in reducing this analysis to a mathematical expression. On one hand, it's clear that more benefits minus less harm reaps a net benefit for the world. But off the scratch pad, the two sides don't always cancel each other out because the benefit might not ultimately come to the person who is harmed.

For example, what you get when you pay 100 Pauls by robbing 50 Peters is 50 pissed-off Peters. In domestic economic policy that would rightfully be called a coercive redistribution of wealth. Which, as recent protests in America have shown, has a tendency rub people the wrong way.

But the real question is, as exceptionalists, what principles should we undertake and what are the guidelines we need to follow to enact those principles? Bolton starts his piece talking about exceptionalism as a value, but I don't see how he is suggesting it should be applied. In North Korea Obama's lack of action against the regime there is condemned yet his more forceful ascertions in the Israeli-palestinian conflict is also not part of exceptionalism.

Does it mean we go to war to fight for a free press (Russia,China)? Can we seize any assets we believe support despots (Saudi Arabia, Quwait)? Can we remove children from backward cultures to teach them 21st century skills? How much do we really want to support the global citizen's right to bear arms?

Again, I'm not arguing that we not be exceptional, I'm trying to discover what foreign policy principles grow out of it. I have tried to suggest in my comments that a strategic approach would be to lead by example, be exceptional in our actions with other global actors without hiding behind it as a blank check excuse to be bent to every political whim.
Exceptionalism is a capital to be invested wisely, applied judiciously because it's missapplication poisons the well a little bit more each time. It only gives ammunition to our enemies in the global struggle for hearts and minds. And, it let's the other democracies off the hook when it comes time to stand up on principle.

-- Mobile and Free

San Francisco Seasons

All around the country Americans experience the passing of time by noting the changes in the seasons. They pass through a living clockwork, marking time in the color of the leaves or the freshness of the ice. But not in San Francisco. Nature condemned her to a perpetual indian summer wedged precariously between two fog banks.

Since the seasons cannot be measured by the change in the leaves, in San Francisco, it is measured by the change in the hipsters whose new fashion fads come rolling in with a trickle and steadily build to a torrent by high season. Leaving San Franciscans nothing but to gather together around the hearth and comment on what a long bearded-hipster it was this year, or I hope cheap-white-sunglasses-hipster is dry so we can get the corn in by the 4th.

The last human coders

The last human coders

A dank tech office is the last place where people still work in the
unified computer system. There a group of scholars are in charge of
coding the small bits of information that the computer can't classify.

The office is full of pasty academics chosen for there penchant for
the obscure and the esoteric. Every year they have less work to do.
Day by day they are classifying, categorizing, and identifying
themselves toward oblivion.

The building was five stories high and squated decrepidely across the
whole block at forest between eighth and elm streets. Once, the
Department of Digitization filled the entire structure with analysts
and engineers, buzzing about the business of teaching the Antel DXT
about the world.

Now the waters of this rich delta had receded all the way back the the
source deep in sub basement d. The last terminals int the building
were set up around the main cable trunk as it came in from deep
underground.

But one of the coders realizes something. She sees a thread of
information start to come in that disturbs her and leads he on an
adventure to find out.

Motion is the key

Motion is the key component to the new visual input.
Get rid of stAtic past and embrace liquid future.

Some People from Valley HS and the Government

Josh Brown Thinks that instead of writing amendments to define marriage, and instead of fighting for who the government should and should not allow to get married- maybe everyone should be thinking of a way to keep government as far away from marriage as possible- no matter who wants to get married. Then we can all get married to whoever we want. Seriously, there are better things for a government to be concerned with.

Rob Schebel at 11:43am June 8
How are you going to delineate who gets benefits and who doesn't, then?

Josh Brown at 11:47am June 8
I don't know- but I'd rather the federal government didn't have the power over it.

J.R. Ward at 11:48am June 8
As much as I agree with you... I do think the government is much better suited to deal with this than religious organizations.

Rob Schebel at 11:48am June 8
Universal health care would solve that problem.

Josh Brown at 11:52am June 8
But JR, the religious organizations don't run marriage. When was the last time someone had to get a marriage LICENSE from the church? They don't. Many people are still using the old traditional religious ceremonies, but often, they don't have any say in marital law, licensing, or who can/can't get married. And really what I'm saying here is ... Read Morethat as long as two people want to get married- why does the government have anything to do with that? Doesn't seem much like a governmental matter, does it? Someone please list out all the tremendous benefits that the federal government gives us for being married. Last I checked, tax wise, there is a marriage PENALTY.

Rob Schebel at 11:53am June 8
Generally, you have to be married under the law to share insurance benefits with your spouse and children.

J.R. Ward at 12:00pm June 8
The Church use to administrate the "laws" for marriage.. and I'm glad they don't today. There have to be "rules" for contracts and the best option for that right now is the American Judicial system unless someone can come up with a better option OR not make marriage a binding contract... But that wouldn't make it the special bond that it is then. Hell I don't know I've been single all my life and I'm more than happy not getting married anytime soon... *laugh*

Daniel Brown at 1:21pm June 8
Universal health care will solve nothing but the extra cash I have left at the end of a month. We need less government in stuff like marriage, healthcare, and every other damn thing..

Jessica Bell at 1:28pm June 8
I don't like the government telling me which "charities" to donate to... when they take my money, and give it to someone else, isn't that a simplistic form of charity? There should be checkbox I can check/uncheck. As far as marriage is concerned... I don't have an answer, but everything shouldn't be tied to it. Just because a system worked 50 years ago doesn't mean we have to make it fit now, right?

Josh Brown at 1:30pm June 8
Aye, Jess. The less government involved in our lives, the better. Take a look at your tax forms, and tell me you want that level of hell for your medical coverage. That won't reform health care- it will make it impossible.

J.R. Ward at 1:38pm June 8
Yeah.. tax forms are messed up... I think people should just give what they want and hope that our government can run the country on charity donations.

Josh Brown at 1:39pm June 8
Well, you CAN do that :P but that's in addition to what they'll automatically take.

J.R. Ward at 1:41pm June 8
ok.. I'm liberal but not stupid.. *laugh* I'm not giving any donations to the government...

Lewayne White at 3:29pm June 8
There's always the option of making marriage like any other business contract. You go to a lawyer, establish whatever survivorship and responsibilities are necessary, you sign it under view of witnesses, and viola. Then you can have whatever public acknowledgement or church ceremony you want to make your spouse or in-laws happy, and then proceed to irritate the s#!% out of each other until death or divorce.

Jamie Grimm at 3:55pm June 8
A-fucking-men! Why should anyone have to pay the government to get permission to get married! Vote Libertarian.

Jamie Grimm at 4:31pm June 8
"How are you going to delineate who gets benefits and who doesn't, then?"

Nobody should get any government benefits for simply being married. If you're talking private companies, then it's up to them, not the government.

Rich Cleland at 5:55pm June 8
There's the case for no government, but what about plain old good government instead? If you want to see what less government looks like, check out the states in the south. Their long-term commitment to small government left them with bankrupt schools, poor health systems and a permanent underclass. Since their goal was to create an easily ... Read Morecontrolled population, that no-government thing works great for them. Is that the kind of system being advocated here?

btw, i agree. abolish civil marriage for everyone and offer civil unions to any two adults who seek public recognition for their merger. A contract is a contract.

Michael DeNato at 6:00pm June 8 via Facebook Mobile
it's too bad the gov't HAS to get involved in this. if everyone believed in equal rights then we wouldn't even be talking about this. remember the gov't had to get involved to stop slavery, allow women and minorities to vote, etc.... i guess that's what makes our country so grea, though, everyone has the right to voice their own opinion.

David Johnston at 7:54pm June 8
The only reason government is in marriage is to take a fee for the license. The government could get out of marriage, health care, roads, most social programs, and stick to the limits the Constitution they all swore to: protecting the citizens of this country from enemies foreign and domestic (which means providing a decent military), staying out ... Read Moreof the business of these 50 states (not 57 Barrack), and basically being a tie breaker for issues between the states. That's it, that's all they are supposed to be doing. Instead name one transaction, just one, you can accomplish without paying the tax man. There isn't one because they've wormed their way into everything.

Back to the marriage point: if one church won't marry two people of the same gender, then they can start their own church and marry off, and Uncle Sam can keep his nose out of it.

Rich Cleland at 12:00am June 9
Where is this no government utopia I hear so much about? I do see a successful nation that operates under this philosophy. The only time I've even heard of it tried is at the end of the Communist Manifesto.

It seems a bit disengenuous to tell government you don't need them to build all the roads and hospitals now that it already provided them.

Besides, in any complex understanding of what it takes to defend a nation against an enemy it would be clear that it needs to ensure that citizens have access to basic health care to make sure they're healthy enough to fight, an education system which gives its citizens the tools to make informed decisions at the polls about when to fight, and take steps to safeguard the economic fortunes that can afford the just wars of national defense. By your definition, the reach of the government would be quite a bit more comprehensive than even now.

Josh Brown at 12:35am June 9
Who has spoken of "no government utopia"? Reading through my status and the comments, there are calls for less government, less intrusion, but no one here has said that the government should be abolished. Good government, these days, Rich, would seem to be an oxymoron no matter which way you lean in the spectrum.

Certainly, you cannot sit at ... Read Moreyour computer while you type, and dream dreams of a day where the federal government has complete and total control of every aspect of your life. That is statism, and with the break-neck pace at which this US federal government is currently usurping untold amounts of power from free enterprise, it is fair and safe to say that statism is their goal.

If they gain control of healthcare as a federal program, they will have the ability to control MUCH more of your life, dependent upon how much your choices will impact the potential health care risk you pose. Sounds ridiculous? So did the federal govt. owning GM, a year ago.

David Johnston at 5:30am June 9
Anybody think a bunch of egg heads in DC can decide how to spend your money better than you can on things like health care, schools, roads, and other semi-important stuff? Assuming you take a paycheck, check the gross versus what you take home. Now think about the astronomical taxes you pay every time you put a gallon of gas in your car, the ... Read Moreproperty tax on your house, the sales tax (city, sometimes county, state, and coming soon federal) you pay every time you buy something. The over reach has happened, it's here, it's both sides of the aisle who have done this.

And Rich, I do think I or a private sector entity can do a better job of educating my children and maintaining the roads I use, as well as running the hospitals.

Question: which public sector restaurant do you go to on Saturday evening? Do you prefer the federal foods, or the State Sandwiches? Oh yeah, you don't line up for a government cafeteria on the weekends (yet). The private sector is better because of competition

Rich Cleland at 9:38am June 9
Is it just me or are we witnessing a massive corporate fail whale right now? Unfettered markets have failed in the housing industry, energy production, the financial markets and the auto industry. Costs in the corporate-dominated health insurance market are spiraling out of control. Millions of American jobs have been sent overseas because ... Read Moreshareholders wanted double-digit profit margins and corporate leaders got fat bonuses to achieve them.

Rather than proving that the government is over-reaching by stepping in to try and save millions more american jobs at GM, why doesn't it show that corporate leadership is inherently shortsighted, serving the narrow interests of a small number of very rich people to the potential detriment of the people who are counting on their jobs at GM to feed their kids.

Rich Cleland at 9:49am June 9
The government currently uses the private sector to supply troops and reconstruction in Iraq. Because of market forces, they have to pay those truckers five times more than an army private makes to deliver the goods in a war zone. It costs more and, as a private citizen, that driver can refuse to run those supplies up to the front lines where they ... Read Moreare needed. This increased reliance on the private sector to provide for the common goods has cost the taxpayers billions more in Iraq.

Government is an opportunity to pool resources to try and serve the public interest. These people work for us. If they aren't doing their job, we can and should fire them.

Did the people in California get to fire the CEO of Enron when he starved them of power to jack up the prices? Do cancer patients have an opportunity to replace the board at their insurance company which, after taking their dutifully paid premiums every month, built a bureaucracy whose singular purpose was to deny claims?

David Johnston at 10:38am June 9
Wow, Rich, where to start? Housing failed because Jimmy Carter signed the Fairness in Housing act strong arming mortgage companies into giving risky loans to unqualified people. Bill Clinton doubled down on this. Fannie and Freddie cooked the books, then their executives got out just before the bubble popped. If we had a good media some of the ... Read Morefolks who pocketed 90-million in Fannie money could be questioned, they now work for Obama. W. Bush was wrong to enact TARP, and Obama is throwing more money down that hole. Capitalism provides big rewards, but with BIG risks. One of those risks is failure, then your assets are bought up and somebody else has a go of it. The ONLY reason GM is in the hands of the feds right now is the UAW and the money that helped get Obama elected. Nearly all the "fail whale" as you call it can be traced back to the feds monkeying with capitalism and not allowing the markets to work, including Gov Gray Davis trying to price control energy in CA.

Their governments already do? And yet when someone can afford to, they rush right into the United States for the BEST health care available on the planet.



As I said before, I'm not an anarchist, there is a role for government. FDA, FCC, FAA, and some others that make sure minimum standards are met are fine, necessary even.



But you're out of your mind if you think the UAW has made concession after concession to keep the auto industry going. Their wages, pensions, layoffs, ability to hire/fire, and nearly every other aspect of management/labor relationships is skewed badly. I have friends who work at a Chevy dealership here in Des Moines. They share with me the innane policies the UAW has passed (like when a line is shut down for re-tooling or due to overstock, the workers can come in and sit around and still pull 90% of their salary, please tell me that's useful and "making concessions" to keep the company going).



The real scare right now is that this administration has brushed the line between private and public sector aside and now they get to lord over who lives and who dies. At least ten banks want to (have TRIED to) give the TARP and Porkulus money back. Obama won't take it. Now why could that be? He says "we don't want to run the financial sector." Then he takes over the financial sector. Do please tell me why the feds won't take the money back and get out of the private sector's business.



And you want to talk about deregulation? Yes, I've seen the articles protecting your Obama from getting his sacred hands dirty in the economic mess that he is making worse with each dollar spent. You guys want to reach back thirty years or so and blame Reagan for deregulating banking. Yeah, because from that decision (bill was proposed by a democrat and passed by a democrat majority Senate and House, but let's not worry about details, right, just blame Reagan), but from that decision to present day no other decisions or issues occurred. No, not dot com bubble, no decisions to NOT build energy infrastructure, no meddling in what cars should be made. Nope none of that happened.



Face it, Obama is screwing the pooch and no amount of spin is going to save him from the inflation and double digit unemployment. And what's scary? I think he wants it this way so he can continue to pull power into the feds.


Rich Cleland
June 9 at 12:27pm
I don't believe I said anything that would give the impression that I fault Democrats more or less than I fault Republicans. Rather, I agreed with you about the Democrats and added what I thought was evidence that both sides have created this mess we're in.

I think politicians acted the way they did to support corporate interests to the detriment of citizens because corporations were paying their bills and padding their pocketbooks.

You don't think it is a bit ironic that you deride my attempt to spread the blame across the political structure to include the ills of deregulation by saying that "reaching back thirty years" to blame Reagan (whom I did not mention) was ridiculously simplistic? Especially in light of the fact that i was only responding to your claims that Jimmy Carter (thirty-FOUR years ago) caused the collapse of the housing and finance industries?

I do.

David Johnston

June 11 at 6:47pm

Rich, ironic name since you obviously want the government to get more of your money than you do, deregulation of an industry allowed for a myriad of different decisions and things to happen, some of them good (lowly cube dwelling citizens such as myself to start investing in the stock market via funds, 401K, 403B, etc.), and some of them bad (corporate execs not playing by the rules and running for the hills with ill gotten funds).

Carter's decision had no good in it. Well, the intentions might have been good, to provide everyone with the "American Dream" of owning a home. But none of the consequences of these good intentions were good ones. Bad loans were made, then more bad loans were made. The worst part was that federally controlled Fannie and Freddie KNEW about these decisions and instead of being the whistle blowers they were set up to be, they acted more like the corporate execs you demonize and they pocketed the profits and bailed. Clinton accelerated this little balloon, but the industry itself ultimately imploded because for the last 3-4 years of the housing boom products like zero interest loans, and refinancing every two years were taking place ... and again Fannie and Freddie did NOTHING.

So, yes, I think it's fair to say the Fairness in Housing Act has a DIRECT link to present day housing woes. Did the industry members help it along? Oh sure, but only after they saw Fannie and Freddie were going to sit idle and soak up as much profit as they could.

Bottom line is that I trust human nature, capitalism, and competition FAR more than I trust some DC hack to make decisions that impact my life. Leave as much of my money in MY pocket and let me decide which food to buy, which car to drive, what charities to support, which school to send my kids to, how to invest for my retirement, etc. The feds want a piece of ALL those decisions, and that scares the hell out of me for now and for the future.

invention

TED Talk Video: Clay Shirky on How Cellphones, Twitter, Facebook Can Make History

TED Talk Video: Clay Shirky on How Cellphones, Twitter, Facebook Can Make History

Posted using ShareThis

Lewis and clark

Their expodition called themselves The Corps of Discovery.

She did her job with the enthusiam of an emlpoyee

She did her job with the enthusiam of an emlpoyee - young woman
waiting for two shortround dogs to take a crap outside the posh old
nursing home.

Re: readers

I agree, except that there are some nuances to the "user" distinction that help to better shake apart the previous paradigm. I think "reader" connotes a uni-directional process of information reception. "Consumer" is a more active descriptor than reader and one that evokes a clearer relationship for targeting products to demand markets, but it still carries too much baggage related to the role of passive reception.

I think the Times is trying to adopt "user" to 1) change their own internal expectations of the part their customers/readers/consumers have to play in the product, and 2) change the self-perception of the reader such that they see their own role as active and participatory.

Users can make things. Consumers take things off the shelves and don't expect to put anything on them. If the product is gone one day, the consumer moves to the next brand on the shelves. But, if they start putting their own product on the shelves under a particular brand, they get more involved and have more at stake if that brand fails.

I might describe it as the "I am Spartacus" effect (have you seen that movie?). It was a very successful part of the Obama campaign. The brilliance of the campaign was that it convinced supporters that there was an opportunity and even an expectation for them to put something on the shelf under the Obama brand. Then they could see his failure as their own failure because they were in effect co-producers.

Of course, the downside for the campaign or any other organization that employs the super-user model (facebook comes quickly to mind) is that, once engaged, the organization must sacrifice unilateral action in favor of community-directed (or at least, directed-community) action.

That being said, perhaps user is still not the right word either. Maybe the Times should think about words like "co-producers," "citizens," "journalists," "developers," "colleagues," "citizen reporters," "editors," "members," "participants," or "comrades" to describe their readers. Many of these suggestions, of course, would never fly at the  top-down power command structured New York Times.

Companies with strict hierarchical structure can't engage in this new art because they are systematically prohibited from ceding any power to communal control. The Times's one-to-many structure where managing editors beget senior editors beget editors beget reporters doesn't even have a socket for the community to jack in. Reporters are the most public face of the company, but the community can't come in there because reporters have no power to share. There is almost no public face for the editors, so no easy access comes there either.

This has long been a chronic problem for the news media. The traditional acknowledgement of this problem has come in the form of a public editor who is supposed to review input from the readership, find an answer, and publicly report the findings. While the public editor role is important, it has not been largely successful and it doesn't get you to Spartacuses it just engenders stone throwers.

The Times is THE elite news organization in the country. Unless they are willing to expose the Grey Lady to the muddled, chaotic advances of every citizen suitor, changing the semantics is not going to change their fate. The Daily Kos lets any member write their own diaries and several times a day, the editors talk about and promote the works of individual diarists in the main content section of the page. At times it's slutty, ranty journalism to say the least, but it also produces information, creates conversation and community, not to mention a rabid fan base willing to open their pocketbooks to support the Kos and many of the causes it supports.

Nobody seems to be talking about the DailyKos dying.
 


 

---

From: "spaceman@fiolink.com" <spaceman@fiolink.com>
To: Rich Cleland <rcleland@wisc.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, June 3, 2009 3:31:20 PM
Subject: RE: readers

They should just skip straight to "consumers". That's the final stage of abstraction.

Consumer = the person who uses your product / service
Customer = the person who purchases the product / service
Influencer = the people who influence the decision of purchase, either positively or negatively


-----Original Message-----
From: "Rich Cleland" <rcatuw@yahoo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 3, 2009 2:46pm
To: "Mike LaVigne" <spaceman@fiolink.com>
Subject: readers

Thought you might find this interesting. NYT have redetermined their "readers" as "users."

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=137060

Immanent critique

"For immanent criticism, the successful work is 'not one which resolves objective contridictions in a spurious harmony, but one which expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contridictions, pure and uncompromised, in its inner-most structure.'" p18

Is there a difference between art which points out contridictions that exist in a harmonious reality and art that points out contridictions from an inharmonious worldview. Yes. I think one of them utilizes irony. If that one is the former, that makes the latter as either cynical or very droll.

Definition of ideology

I'm reading the culture industry book by Adorno. They talk about a
definition of ideology as a socially necessary appearance. I'm
wondering if they mean that society/culture is set up such that people
need categories and heuristics which then operate to maintain
stability. The particularization of life(style) into types--where
people are socialized to the same cultural schema--actually keeps them
acting relatively uniformly. For example, this act is classified as
deviant, so I won't engage with it, or I will, based on what my
ideology is. If Ideology dictates behavior, controling the definitions
attached to all ideologies means you control the boundaries of
behavior; and also the ability of all people within each division to
see themselves holistically.

Sensors

Sensors
The app should be judging the distance to your destination and letting
you know when the next bus is coming. It factors your eta by an
average of your usual pace and matches that with the info on the bus.
Don't hurry, you still have ten minutes. Stay outside.

The program stays silent for a week while it develops a baseline of
data. Then it starts anticipating your actions based on past behavior
and gradually narrows down to taste.

Thesis possibility

Thesis possibility
What are the effects of the dependence of academia on the printed word?

Mutable texts:
What does it mean that a paper can be updated? Investigate the effects
of updating on blogs. Does the mutability of an idea over time change
how we think about the idea? Compare this to cognitive, psychological,
and philisophical changes from oral to literate culture. Memory

Zeno's arrow:
Investigate the importance of the transition state. What is the
significance of the phase transition in science? What can we gain from
representing data in motion? What limitations are internalized when
researchers limit themselves to snapshot windows of data?

Visibility:
Why is human rationality so wrapped up in sight? Doubting Thomas is a
well-known folk personality.

Media is the message:
What was McLuhan talking about? How do media properties shape our
thinking? If they do shape our thinking, why can't we invent a medium
that would engender the type of society we would like to see? What
would that look like?

Limits of paradigms:
How do the limitations of our medium manifest into our epistimology?
What if we design a limitless paradigm? One that would be designed to
give people the tools to check it for false limits and rapidly
assimilate new ideas.

When all you have is a hammer, all problem look like a nail.

I just read this article at readwriteweb today. This is the type of communication data analysis and visualization that I would love to go back to graduate school to do. The use of dynamic visualizations which  strip data out of static charts and graphs and the way it will change the patterns in which we think are the future.

The dependency of human reason on the faculty of sight is fundamental. This dependency is acknowledged in the development of graphs in the first place. What these new visualization tools (and, importantly, their creative application toward data) bring to this old system is a better connection with the interdependencies of time/space and data.

As we discussed over the weekend, the limitations of our research tools over time can prejudice what is known,  knowable, or, most devastatingly, what is worth knowing. Because, for better or for worse, academics have been judged on their publications, research that did not translate to the print medium was simply irrelevant. If you can't get it published, it can't help you, so move on.

As McLuhan suggests, it is the medium of expression that dictates the content of the expression (and the epistemological limits of the thought behind the expression). In this case, the static nature of printed publications creates a snapshot mindset. It over-weights the value of an event description at a point in time. If a researcher discovers information that changes their perspective on something they wrote, they do not rewrite or update the existing work, they leave it intact and create another work over the top of it.

This static limitation of print has also affected our understanding of events as depicted in charts and graphs. Since the printed text can not accurately display transition states, researchers were forced to represent them instead as moments in time. This sacrifices part of what is knowable to what is representable and it engenders, over time, a false sense of completeness to the research which is presented.

The philosopher Zeno (500 BCE-ish) famously denied the existence of motion by demonstrating that as an arrow is actually continually at rest if its flight is viewed as individual moments, because in each of these moments, the arrow remains unchanged in it's dimensions in space. This research approach may give us plenty of useful information about the arrow such as the type of tip, the size, and general construction, but it denies access to crucial pieces of information about the arrow--namely where it came from and to whom is it headed.

With regard to the arrow, we can easily derride Zeno's logic as too narrowly focused to be useful. Unfortunately, the utility of this same approach applied to academic research which is chained to the static medium is much harder to dislodge. 

The availability of computers to build dynamic data simulations coupled with a mutable medium like the internet represents a new paradigm in research. In the same way that the old system definied the limits of academic thought, this new system could open the way for much broader mindset which has access to tools that can model the world in terms that are truer to the way it functions.

But to gain this freedom, researchers will have to access these new tools. Unfortunately, academics are slow to change; in part because the university system is structured such that each new product is largely a copy of a master stored in their tenured faculty (who was, in turn, a copy of another master). These copies are made (warts and all) and inserted back into the machine to mint "new" copies of their own.

The problem is finding academics who can speak the new languages. When i read articles like the one linked here, I feel like there may be a place in academia for me. (yeah yeah, now i just have to finish my thesis).

Anyway, if you made it this far in my rant. I thank you for participating. Expression is an important part of the thought process and it is helpful to me to have a destination to drive the process.

now get back to work! :)

rc