We DO know our Presidents.
Presidents that did well shared similar policies.
Presidents that did poorly often took the same approach as others that also did poorly.
new colors of history
“Knowing no better, artists in the 16th century took the bare stone at face value. Michelangelo and others emulated what they believed to be the ancient aesthetic, leaving the stone of most of their statues its natural color.”
UV light makes pigment remaining on ancient Greek statues glow. A Smithsonian slideshow recreates glittering color among Greek armor, fashion and architecture. [story here]
‘The genius behind the Parthenon’s sculptures was the architect and artist Phidias. It was said that he alone among mortals had seen the gods as they truly are.’
gas data widgets
co2now.org
The discussion hopes CO2 can be restrained around 350ppm. We know that’s bearably safe, we’ve lived in it. At 450ppm, few want to predict, or can predict, how wild things will become. Models say we’ll put a few cities on stilts, move millions of farms… cherries in the Yukon, and so on.
garish colonialism
Escaping New York’s temporary wealth surcharge, Rush Limbaugh sells out.
Brokers predicted the furnishings might get in the way of the sale, but those familiar with the transaction said the Manhattan condominium sold at $11.5 million.
Slideshow at Luxist.
augmenting reality
Here’s my theory: the problem with Google is that Eric Schmidt is creepy. I think he’s a really weird dude. Recall, for example, this comment of Schmidt’s from 2009, regarding Google and privacy: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
John Gruber at Daring Fireball:
More and more, I get the feeling that if there’s a rift between the old “Don’t be evil” Google and the new “Let’s do whatever we want” Google, that it’s a rift between Schmidt and Larry/Sergey — if not personally, then at least culturally within the company. On the one side, the Larry/Sergey Google that makes amazing cool things — the search engine, Gmail, Android. On the other, the Schmidt Google that, in its efforts to serve ads as efficiently as possible, no longer seems concerned with the traditional Western concept of personal privacy.
coddling events
“Tick is a humble genesis, tock a feeble apocalypse.”
We insist there’s a beginning and an end, addicted to it says Frank Kermode, otherwise we’d hear the clock as it is, tick, tick.
fear as tactics
If fear is all you’ve got, America will reject you.
Americans don’t cheer the bully. That’s what distinguishes us as a people. Americans need to stand up to it, as individuals, and not be bullied.
It’s important to note that Republicans today don’t really have a coherent agenda, save opposition. They don’t really have an agenda because everything that should be their agenda has been discredited —tax cuts, foreign wars, small government, government as a business. They’re for austerity in a Depression.
what data do about you
User security and privacy — control, really.
1. Service data is the data you give to a social networking site in order to use it. Such data might include your legal name, your age, and your credit-card number.
2. Disclosed data is what you post on your own pages: blog entries, photographs, messages, comments, and so on.
3. Entrusted data is what you post on other people’s pages. It’s basically the same stuff as disclosed data, but the difference is that you don’t have control over the data once you post it — another user does.
4. Incidental data is what other people post about you: a paragraph about you that someone else writes, a picture of you that someone else takes and posts. Again, it’s basically the same stuff as disclosed data, but the difference is that you don’t have control over it, and you didn’t create it in the first place.
5. Behavioral data is data the site collects about your habits by recording what you do and who you do it with. It might include games you play, topics you write about, news articles you access (and what that says about your political leanings), and so on.
6. Derived data is data about you that is derived from all the other data. For example, if 80 percent of your friends self-identify as gay, you’re likely gay yourself.
by Bruce Schneier
Chief Security Technology Officer
http://www.schneier.com
to utter in cackles
define:cackle
Cry of a hen laying an egg.
define:cackle of rads
Radiation when exposed to lunacy.
Oh well, words are not really important.
Comment A:
Sarah Palin is a person that has had a mediocre education and has been thrust into the limelight by a desperate politician in search of a miracle.
Whenever she goes ‘off-script’ she’s invariably spewing gobbledygook mistaking quantity for quality and encounters a situation where the speed of her brain has been exceeded by the speed of her mouth. When she has these little verbal quirks, they are not ‘misspeaks’ but a product of a limited vocabulary.
Everybody seems focused on the word cackle but what about the usage of the words irony and passé. Irony is a funny contradiction. Passé means out of date. How is disagreement among women ‘ironic’ or ‘passé?
I think she may be speaking in tongue again.
Comment B:
She’s using it in a self-congratulatory way. She and her fellow radicals are cackling all the way to the bank as they promote an agenda in which women and other uppity people are put in their place.
Comment C:
Crucify other women?!
a feel for others
At a time when the richest 1% of Americans own more than the bottom 90% combined… upper-class individuals may tend to preserve and hold onto their wealth… lower-class individuals may give more of their resources away… which is exacerbating economic inequality in society.
The researchers also found evidence that the likelihood of executing other compassionate, generous tasks and behaviors might be explained by their higher concern for equality and empathy for others.
Though on the other end, when researchers provoked compassion in the higher-class participants, they were just as much — if not more — socially conscious as the lower-class participants.
And while we ponder the other end, I’m stunned, stunned I tell you, that police confirm a patient’s claim that her anus had been sewn shut by a midwife suspected of taking revenge during the patient’s labor because she failed to receive a good tip. [link]
national idiocracy
“Out of all the gangsters, serial killers, mass murderers, incompetent & crooked politicians, spies, traitors, and ultra left-wing kooks in all of American history — have you ever wondered who the worst of the worst was?“
First list.
Top Ten Conspiracy Theories
1. Chemtrails —toxic spray from 1000s of New World Order planes.
2. Martial Law —suspend constitution, begin a police state.
3. Concentration Camps —Obama’s brown shirts bring slavery.
4. Foreign Troops on U.S. Soil —contracted occupation forces.
5. Door-to-Door Gun Seizure —New World Order crackdown.
6. 9/11 Plot —perpetual war introduces police state.
7. Population Control —mind-control in food and water.
8. HAARP —more mind control, plus weather and quakes.
9. The Fed —spread of Jewish and banker control.
10. North American Union —total corporate takeover.
OK. Second list.
The Enemies List of the Far Right, ranked from worse to worser to very worst:
—Saul Alinsky —Bill Clinton —Hillary Clinton —Michael Moore —George Soros —Alger Hiss —Al Sharpton —Al Gore —Noam Chomsky —Richard Nixon —Jane Fonda —Harry Reid —Nancy Pelosi —John Wilkes Booth —Margaret Sanger —Aldrich Ames —Timothy McVeigh —Ted Kennedy —Lyndon Johnson —Benedict Arnold —Woodrow Wilson —The Rosenbergs —Franklin Delano Roosevelt —Barack Obama, and THE number one worstest of all time: Jimmy Carter.
describing pirates
Definition of a psychopath:
‘social predators who charm, manipulate and ruthlessly plow their way through life … completely lacking in conscience and feeling for others, they selfishly take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret.’
But difficult for psychologists to research. Trouble is, a successful psychopath will not consent to being studied.
With more self-control and conscientiousness than criminal psychopaths often in prison, successful psychopaths end up as chief executives, university chancellors, top lawyers, politicians and mayors….
| Describe the psychopath? | Type of success? |
| “Utter absence of empathy; manipulated women and children despite pain/damage caused, dishonest in business, superficial/forced emotionality; absence of remorse; chronic deceitfulness” | “Successful retail business financed through unscrupulous and larcenous behaviors” |
| “Remarkable capacity for furthering own interests at expense of others; glib, charming; I am taken in despite the number of times I’ve observed his act; uses seeming empathy to move others; likable despite all this” | “Succeeded in two careers; positions of power, is likable; gotten generally level-headed people to bend rules for him” |
| “Superficially charming, glib, exploitative of others, deceitful; lack of genuine empathy for others but aware enough to feign concern and empathy well when it was socially appropriate to do so; manipulative of others and would set up situations to sacrifice colleagues in order to advance himself” | Maintained a “managerial position in a government organization and commanded a good salary; interviewed well, could move jobs easily” |
| “All aspects of her life revolved around manipulating the system for personal gain or to dirty others for her pleasure” | “She destroyed at least three marriages/lives; she was prosecuted but the county attorney could not get a conviction, she was smooth” |
| “Total disregard for the rules of society and was completely unremorseful about it” | “Was considered a top notch police detective, a hero” |
the vicious unproductive
Outrageous! Would there be enough lamposts to hang them all!
That’s not the cry of economic downturn. That’s economic undertow.
While the banking industry joins Republicans in criticizing the administration for instituting stronger regulations, Wall Street is simultaneously lobbying for Fannie and Freddie to be formally merged into the government and automatically refinancing millions of home loans to help stimulate the economy, er, pad their profits.
this different mindset
Interesting, important & a wee bit hilarious research on kids today. For example, they cannot write in cursive.
They have never worried about a Russian missile strike. They didn’t know IBM ever made typewriters. DNA fingerprinting has always existed.
Hundreds of channels is routine. They never look at their wrist for the time and will not understand if you point at your wrist to ask. Tapping keyboards as toddlers, their first computer is in a museum. As ancient dorm room phone jacks are removed, email is also too slow.
Rock bands always play the White House. The Post Office has always been going broke. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.
Linda Holmes at NPR proposes this list to junk:
This list isn’t about the mindset of the class of 2014. It’s about the mindset of the people who write it. It’s about what makes them feel ancient. It’s not about how college students think at 18; it’s about how we think at 40 and 50 and 60.
choose your side
“…behold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People . . . generously affording to All liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship: deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language, equal parts of the great governmental Machine.”
Dana Milbank, staff writer at the Washington Post, provides an easy-peasy comparison of religious tolerance, then and now.
To help evaluate today’s unkempt rabble-rousing, please take note of the following excerpts penned by George Washington:
I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you… If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good Government, to become a great and happy people.
The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation.
All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.
For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens...
…and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, 
and there shall be none to make him afraid.
shapes of easy pickins
What on earth are the protrusions and bulges on ATM machines? We have no idea. We do not know if required design or wonkish filagree, thus we do not discern if an ATM has been tampered with.
Criminals step in with ATM skimmers that easily blend into a cash machine’s hardware.
Kho Vinh is asking you, “Ask yourself: what exactly are all of those oddly proportioned boxes, varying planes, bizarre joins and strange angles that describe nearly every automated teller machine on the planet?
“Who among us who uses cash machines actually understands the purpose of all those expertly yet randomly fused-together shapes that are somehow intended to constitute a trustworthy money dispensing device?
“The fact of the matter is, the superfluously futuristic form of these machines is so nonsensical, so utterly impractical and useless that even a quickly grafted foreign appendage like a skimmer is indistinguishable from the native hardware.
“The thieves designing these ingenious tools have a much easier job of it because, like the ATMs onto which they’re attached, skimmers don’t have to look like anything you would understand, they just need to look like they might do something you don’t understand.”
Upcoming proposals for ATMs eliminate these easy opportunities to fool us.
h/t Douglas Bowman / StopDesign
other than unwarned
“We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources and we have just reason to be proud of our growth. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils shall have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields, and obstructing navigation…the minerals do not renew themselves. Therefore in dealing with the coal, the oil, the iron, metals generally, all that we can do is try to see that they are wisely used. The exhaustion is certain to come in time.”—Theodore Roosevelt
rebeginning politics
The Transition
Even the Etherious can be Properly Serious
Large aged institutions seeking restitutions aim assumptions, sort gumptions, hoist improvements, educate movements, seeking sufficient not less than omniscient, a task recommended even if dead ended. But regardless conditions in money or munitions or assets distillated in actions sophisticated, real value let me tell you in all categories is not in these stories.
What is the deductive that spurs the productive? Not crisis and debt. Not cyclic bet. Not deficits added nor momentum padded. Not bandits in cults. These stifle results. Not stiffer a fine to help undermine reticent tissue. That only clouds the issue. No I report the facts support the reluctant miser is no fertilizer when what we require is incentives fire.
Lend some support for here I purport our greatest resource no matter our course−impregnable forts, lucrative exports, justice and reason without moral treason or freedom’s impunity in gentle community−our purpose can’t shift to get over this rift. If we’re interdependent, remaining resplendent, tune our novice and junior to rise up the mast, see future and past in all aggregation that fuels innovation, find what is requiring all the untiring to push to the end for which we depend, we must seek the vantage, peer over the rampage, where wisdom’s enough no matter how rough, where no explaining nor drama nor feigning can cloud the growth that freedom’s oath can bring to this nation. Now that’s socialization!
Isn’t it proven that what keeps us movin’ is not intellectual, not dreams ineffectual, however analytical or grandly political? No! Freedom’s invincible if based on the principal there’s motion from ocean to ocean, reaching and catching, comparing and matching, in faith and with fearing, with sweat and engineering, with diligent facts in solvent pacts. If anyone will share it, let’s base it on merit. This is the trend to level the bend, to smooth the tension in cash flow and pension. To recover our know how, get out and show how.
Committees promoting, elevating or demoting the actuarial fences of program consensus, chits and credit no matter who’s led it, no matter the rank, no matter the bank, no firm will ever earn nor thinkers ever learn the power systemic in the creative endemic, always available, never assailable, always effective in freedom’s directive. Lets not be demented with what’s implemented. Do well for doing good. We know that we should.
What’s holding us back? Worry about trouble and lack? Imbalanced obligations, value added among nations, risk and recapture, greed and its rapture, noisy contention paralyzing attention, ideas selected by the blind self-elected? We can rule a fool. Use democracy’s tool! Why stay delirious? Why shrink from what’s serious? Why waste our hours? Is it their choice not ours? Drain their moat and get out & vote. Leave the rhetorical fudge. Use results as our judge. Look square in the face at the problems we chase.
Go back to what’s right in yourself day and night. You know if you’re giving good effort for living. Life is fine when we’re each genuine. Use the responsible onus ’cause history’s shown us society’s crescendo is not innuendo. It’s living without suppression or doubt. It’s not narcissism nor tricks & farcism. It’s not a pork barrel jerk bringing guaranteed work. It’s not voodoo that we do nor a ritualized nod to a relegate god. And it’s not feeble acting or caustic reacting. To be fair, those who care fulfill genuine need whether they follow or lead.
Our Transition Position © Hayes
When you discover errors & dim editing or can offer improvements of point & cadence,
please comment!
issues of dominance
Q: Are you saying that elections don’t matter?
A: No, but they usually matter a lot less than they could, and a lot less in America than they do in other industrialized democracies.
Q: If that’s true, then who rules America?
thinking and imagination
The formation of intelligent critical world citizens !
If no one answers your call, then walk on alone.
Walk alone, walk alone, walk on alone.If no one says a thing, oh you unlucky soul, If faces are turned away, if all go on fearing— Then opening up your heart, You speak up what’s on your mind, you speak up alone.
If they all turn back, oh you unlucky soul, If, at the time of taking the deep dark path, no one cares— Then the thorns that are on the way, Oh you, trampling those with bloodied feet, you tramp on alone.
If a lamp no one shows, oh you unlucky soul, If in a rainstorm on a dark night they bolt their doors— Then in the flame of thunder Lighting your own ribs, go on burning alone.
No nation is so secure in its commitment to democracy that it can afford to gamble its future away by pursuing the false idols of rote learning and mere technical mastery.
midterm cakepan
we creatures capable
Decision making and governance among Inuit authorities.
via Chris Corrigan:
Pijitsirniq, the concept of serving.
Piliriqatigiingniq, the concept of collaborative purpose.
Pilimmaksarniq, the concept of skills and knowledge acquisition.
Qanuqtuurunnarniq, the concept of being resourceful.
Aajiiqatigiingniq, the concept of consensus decisions.
Avatimik Kamattiarniq, the concept of environmental stewardship.
This planet is all we’ve got.
comfortable and well
Sports Illustrated series ‘Where Are They Now’
Tyson: I was addicted to rehab. I was like the poster boy, because I would go to like five meetings a day.
Tyson: You know, people say, “My god is better than your god.” But how do we prove whose god is better? And this is when it gets really interesting. This is how we prove whose god is better than whose: [by saying,] “I’m going to kill you, or you’re going to kill me first.” And that’s real godly. That’s real godly. Yeah. I bet you people think, I wonder who would win a fight with the Prophet Mohammad and Jesus? These are sick people. This is crazy, you know what I mean?
Tyson: Listen: I was in St. Tropez, in the South of France. In Ibiza, Spain. I was in Monte Carlo. I was in the Ukraine, Russia, all those places, for three months. From Russia I went to Lisbon, Portgual, from Portugal I went to Amsterdam. In Amsterdam I met this drug dealer, right? And he sees that I like getting high, and he wants to be my buddy, right? This guy goes and gets me a big rock of cocaine. So pretty soon I got a party going on. I got everything: I got these rugby players. I got these naked girls, I got all these … everything’s going on in the room. Plus I also had this girl with me that I picked up in Romania. But then [the dealer he met in Amsterdam] saw how much of a mess I was. He came in and kicked everybody out of my room! All the nude people, all the people having sex. He said, “I feel so bad I ever gave him that stuff.”
the power of character
There is persistent demand for characters. Entertainment is based on characters. The success of Avatar and Pixar for computer generated characters.
The total virtual character market is greater than $35 billion annually and growing 18% per year.
What made Max Headroom a major media icon? Because people innately respond to human-like form.
Robot developer David Hanson asserts, “People are deeply discerning of social intelligence in the human form….
The human mind is hardwired for social cognition and face-to-face interactions. We must witness the machines learn and grow, fill with wonder and hope, and strive towards goals, see them struggle and overcome.
“This explains people’s powerful attraction to fictional characters in entertainment and literature, and why characters inspire such strong emotions in people, even love.
“Machines must form deep, caring relationships with people, and attain true love and wisdom. As protagonist machines obtain these capabilities, they will grow more desirable to consumers.”
delightful confidence
5 Year Old Sings National Anthem
star.wmv – 2:03 – YouTube
Fred Hart says, “This video will be all over the internet.”
John Dvorak says, “Wow! Sort of makes you wonder about reincarnation.”