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The quote is by Ralph Ellison -

Life is as the sea, art a ship
 in which man conquers life's
crushing formlessness, reducing
 it to a course, a series of
 swells, tides and wind currents
 inscribed on a chart. 

Flash cartoon, I'm the Decider! 

glossy screens versus matte 

Do glossy screens on computer's suck. Judging by the screen shots at the link they do, at least on notebooks. Most of the commenters thought they were at the least a nuisance. One person noted that glossy screens do have better contrast in the right conditions. I'm not willing to make that sacrifice myself on a notebook, though my personal desktop does have one. Then at home I have control over the ambient light. To get better contrast or should I see get the benefits of glossy screens even in a low lit room means you still catch light reflections from lamps and overhead lighting along with the contrast. On a large screen desktop at home with soft ambient lighting I'm good to go especially when warching DVDs, but who always uses their laptop under nicely controlled lighting conditions. Maybe I've just been in too many high rise office buildings with garish lighting and sun pouring in through 6 foot high windows. Even in a coffee shop glare is bad, I'm not one to feel that I have to check my e-mail constantly while trying to get a caffeine buzz.  

Pack up your cares and wooes, or in this case pack up any paranoia. A More Dangerous World? Think Again 

Since 9/11 and the global war on terror, the world is a much more dangerous place. Right?

Dead wrong, according to a recent in-depth study, which found that virtually every trend in global security in the past dozen years has been positive, and dramatically so.

The world is today a safer place, according to the Human Security Report, a project funded by five nations and published by Oxford University Press. The study, which is the culmination of three years of research, offers a comprehensive look at the data on political violence from 1988–2005, and reaches some arresting conclusions:

  # Fewer armed conflicts. Armed conflicts declined by more than 40 percent since the early 1990s. During this period, fifteen more armed struggles for self-determination ended than started. Today there are fewer armed secessionist conflicts than at any point since 1976.

  # Less genocide. Notwithstanding the horrors of Rwanda , Bosnia , and Sudan, the number of genocides and “politicides” fell by 80 percent between the high point in 1988 and 2001.

  # Fewer international crises. The number of “international crises” declined by more than 70 percent between 1981 and 2001.