psychology of vista, weathered, unconsciable tactics of mccain supporters
August 26, 2008 at 3:51 pm | In Philosophy & Religion, legal, photography, photoshop, progressive, tech culture | No CommentsMicrosoft’s ‘new’ operating system: Mojave
Cnet’s Ina Fried found out about a recent trip that Microsoft made to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a “new” operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that “Mojave” was actually Windows Vista.
I don’t have a direct link to this, it came in a news letter that i get from HelpWithWindows. The psychology is interesting because there has been so many negative reviews/comments/blog posts about Vista. I’m using it right now. I like it. I’m not a Microsoft fan, but Vista is easier to navigate, manages files much better, has more built in features and functionality and is more stable then XP. It does need more RAM to opreate at its best and could a couple tweaks, but nothing that really bothers me. And I like the looks of it. Propably like many of the people that read this blog I use a computer a lot. To finally have some of the user friendly looks and overall experience that MACs have makes that time on the keyboard a little more enjoyable.
Some elementary logic:
John McCain is a Republican.
Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were Republicans.
Thus John McCain supports domestic right-wing terrorism.
How about this, John McCain claims to be a Christian. In fact he claims to be a Episcopalian and a Baptist.
Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were Christians.
Thus John McCain supports right-wing Christian domestic terrorism.
John McCain was in the military.
Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were both in the military.
Thus John McCain is a co-conspirator of the worse right-wing extremists and supports members of the military committing acts of terror.
I suspect that my logic is a little off. Most Republicans do not com mitt acts of domestic terrorism. Neither do the vast majority of Christians in America. Few veteran or active duty military would even think of blowing up an office building. The problem is that the Right doesn’t mind, has no conscience about using that kind of twisted logic to attack Senator Obama. Obama Responds To Swift Boat Attack While McCain Violates Previous Vow To Condemn Such Attacks They’re trying to connect Obama in the public’s mind with former radical Bill Ayers ( who committed his crimes when Obama was eight years old). Obama worked on an anti-poverty project that also included Ayers and some Republicans. In other words if one of your co-workers, a family friend or even a neighbor once molested a child you’re also guilty of child molesting by reason of your proximity. Some right-wing sites are screaming censorship because Obama is trying to stop the ads by this group of radical wingers. Sorry, but the Constitutional has said from day one libel and slander are not covered under free speech. These 527 groups are also not supposed to run ads that push specific votes, only to express views about issues. Good case here that the ads run by the American Issues Project are illegal.
John McCain bets the farm that women aren’t listening - Hillary Clinton supporters and moderate Republican women in particular.
grand tetons and barn, sustainability or else, offbeat plot
August 25, 2008 at 3:08 pm | In economic, environmental, photography, sociology | No Comments
Jeffrey D. Sachs says that Thomas Robert Malthus has taken quite a beating from economists over the years, Are Malthus’s Predicted 1798 Food Shortages Coming True? From what I’ve read, he takes a fair amount of abuse from sociologists too. Tom famously predicted the human population would increase faster then the ability to provide food for them. So far, as Sachs says, and we all know science and technology have combined to delay Malthus’s dire warnings. One might also add family planning, wars, disease and despite some despots here and there better governance. The problem we’re facing with a world population pushing seven billion is we’ve somewhat hit the wall on cheap resources. Everything you can reach out and touch, everything within your view comes from the earth -plastics are produced from petro-chemicals, i.e. fossil fuels. Peak Oil, in this case interpreted as the amount of oil that can be extracted cheaply, not the total amount of oil available, is near at hand. Forests per se are not renewable. Clear cuts are usually replanted with monoculture hybrids that grow faster then average, but the ecosystem is then gone and the new trees will takes years to reach harvest size.
If we indeed run out of inexpensive oil and fall short of food, deplete our fossil groundwater and destroy remaining rainforests, and gut the oceans and fill the atmosphere with greenhouse gases that tip the earth’s climate into a runaway hothouse with rising ocean levels, we might yet confirm the Malthusian curse. Yet none of this is inevitable The idea that improved know-how and voluntary fertility reduction can sustain a high, indeed rising, level of incomes for the world remains correct, but only if future technology enables us to economize on natural capital rather than finding ever more clever ways to deplete it more cheaply and rapidly.
Thankfully Sachs doesn’t put all our eggs in the science and technology will save us basket. In short we need to to a better job of planning and changing some of our cultural attitudes about consumption. It seems to be a choise between never learning the difference between want and need, or learning about sustainable growth. if we don’t, a hundred years from now students might not be having a laugh at Malthus expense.
Babylon A.D. plot: “Veteran-turned-mercenary Thoorop takes the high-risk job of escorting a woman from Russia to America. Little does he know that she is host to an organism that a cult wants to harvest in order to produce a genetically modified Messiah.” A nice safe fictional speculation about the end of the world. In the end you get to go home.
John McCain Lives In Subsidized Housing, by way of tax beaks.
kelly ripa’s ankle tattoo, goodbye columbus hello admiral zheng he, anti-kidnapping chip?
August 24, 2008 at 1:54 pm | In history, news, photography, photoshop, progressive, tech culture | No CommentsGavin Menzies: mad as a snake - or a visionary?. Some might remember Menzies from six years ago when he proposed some major revisions to history. Namely the Chinese were tracking around the North America continent a few decades before Columbus. He doesn’t mention as far as i know the Vikings who had small settlements in North America around the 10th century. Menzies then wrote a sequel claiming that the Chinese started, or their influence started the Renaissance. Menzies doesn’t read or speak Chinese so he couldn’t analyze primary sources directly. He claims a DNA link between native American Indians and the Chinese yet has never produced any DNA analysis. At the same time just in case his thesis has some portion of truth maybe some more research is warranted into if, when and how the Chinese arrived in North America. Unfortunately much of what he considers evidence is not much more then dubious claims. Even if they did visit, much like the Vikings they left little in the way of historical heritage.
Mexicans get microchipped over kidnapping fears. They might be spending a lot of money for a false sense of security.
A transmitter in the chip communicates with a larger GPS-enabled device carried by the client, Xega says. That gadget reports its location to the company when the owner presses a panic button, something the device could arguably do without an under-skin chip.
Biden said, “Ladies and gentlemen, if your kitchen table is like mine, you sit there at night after you’ve put the kids to bed and you talk about what you need, you talk about how much you’re worried about being able to pay the bills. Well, ladies and gentleman, that’s not a worry John McCain will have to worry about…. He’ll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at.”
Myth of the week and one we’re likely to hear from the usual echo chamber in the months ahead, Myths and falsehoods regarding Obama’s votes on “born alive” bills
kelly ripa’s ankle tattoo. to me it looks like a stylized kangaroo with flowers.
identify suspects from their brain activity, bicycle goddess, direct questions and answers
August 23, 2008 at 12:31 pm | In graphic art, news, photography, progressive, science | No CommentsRecently I posted on this article from Wired The Pentagon Wants Your Brain about cognitive enhancements that we can look forward to or maybe not. This article from The Guardian picks up on the same topic, but mentions something that Philip K. Dick and Steven Spielberg warned us about, Brain will be battlefield of future, warns US intelligence report
On the battlefield, bullets may be replaced with “pharmacological land mines” that release drugs to incapacitate soldiers on contact, while scanners and other electronic devices could be developed to identify suspects from their brain activity and even disrupt their ability to tell lies when questioned, the report says.
[ ]…The report says brain imaging will not improve sufficiently in the next 20 years to read peoples’ intentions from afar and spot criminals before they act, but it might be good enough to help identify people at a checkpoint or counter who are afraid or anxious. (emphasis mine)
Maybe the concept of Precrime isn’t in the works, but spotting people who are anxious is just a few degrees off. We all think some bad thoughts once in a while. Certainly many people feel anxious at some times . A scanner set up someplace in a city in the way that live cams are set up around New York City says you’re more nervous then is acceptable - that criteria determined by some well meaning committee for our protection - suddenly you’re stopped for questioning because you were thinking about breaking up with your mate, or quitting your job or whatever. Then you’re in the position of defending your personal life and thoughts to someone with the authority to detain you.
be free buy a bike or be like a goddess is the implication of this old bicycle advertisement. The sentiments not all that different from the modern adverts to get us to buy a car.
A NOUN, A VERB, AND P.O.W….. Everyone wants to be sensitive to McCain’s time as a POW, but those words are not the answer to a question about his health-care policies or an inquiry about his cheating at a question and answer session at a church. POW does not stand for Protective Outer Wrap. Thank you sir for your honorable service, but your past hardships acknowledged, you want to be president and it is incumbent of on you to answer some questions about your political positions and policies. This is not an unreasonable expectation nor does it in any way diminish your past hardships. Many of us remember a situation in which people of a certain party did in fact attack a decorated vet’s service, Delegates mock Kerry with ‘purple heart’ bandages
Delegates to the Republican National Convention found a new way to take a jab at Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s Vietnam service record: by sporting adhesive bandages with small purple hearts on them
The Republican band has become mud partly due to years of doling out this kind of garbage. Bush hasn’t helped. So McCain a quarter century veteran of Washington politics is running as the reform candidate? We don’t know what those reforms are because the answer is either nonsensical sound bites or a three letter abbreviation.
autumn russet. wallpaper size, but has some fog and noise that might not be to everyone’s taste.
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