April 2008 Archives

This little online tool, Flickr Color Selectr, allows you to pick a color. The software conducts a search of Flickr Creative Commons pictures to find pictures in which the color you selected is prominently featured.

So I moved the color selector bar to the middle of the green selection. When the green gradient of those hues appeared, I moved the round hue adjustment to the hue I wanted.

In just a second the screen filled with pictures. Below is one of them.

This is astounding--very, very hard for me to watch and certainly impossible for me to ever do.

Who is this guy (the one walking and shooting the video)? He must be a professional tightrope walker!

This limestone gorge in the south of Spain, through which passes the Guadalhorce river, sits the Desfiladero de los Gaitanes pass that is 700m (2296 feet) high. Famous its very dangerous path, the Caminito del Rey is not what I would call a tourrist attraction. In 2000, the paths was remove because a tourrist died trying to cross it. Just watching that video gave me vertigo. You wouldn’t catch me going there…ever! Some people are fearless such as this camera man.

Links/Sources: Brightcove - Wikipedia

[Source: Neatorama » Blog Archive » Caminito del Rey]

I like reading this blog. This was an unexpected non-characteristic post.

I'm debuting a new feature on kottke.org. On (some? most? all?) Fridays, I'll wrap up the week with a list of interesting facts I've found that don't really warrant their own posts for whatever reason. I hope you find it useful. Suggestions for next week's list are welcome via email.

Life expectancy for women in some parts of the US declined significantly from 1983 to 1999. [NY Times]

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population but has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners. One out of every 100 American adults is presently incarcerated. [NY Times]

Nearly 1 million women in Iraq are widows or divorcees, or their husbands are missing. [Washington Post]

A quarter of all the petroleum ever consumed in the history of the world was consumed in the last 10 years. Humans collectively consume 6,000 gallons of fuel every second. [PBS]

About a third of all American high school students drop out. That's about one every 26 seconds. [NY Times]

China now has the world's largest population of internet users. [Reuters]

Humans may have almost gone extinct almost 70,000 years ago. The total population may have dipped to 2,000 individuals, possibly because of drought. [CNN]

Standard Operating Procedure is the first movie Errol Morris has shot with a Cinemascope aspect ratio of 2.35:1. [Errol Morris at the Apple Store]

Harrison Ford urged George Lucas to kill off Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi because it would have made a better story. [Guardian]

Nearly 80 percent of roommates got so drunk last night. [The Onion]

[Source: ● Ten things I learned this week, 01]

In addition to charging him for committing murder, they should charge him (as in money) for increasing his life expectancy. What an ass--shrinking though it may be!

19-year-old Broderick Laswell was arrested in Benton County, Arkansas last September on a murder charge. He weighed 413 pounds at the time. Since then, he has lost 105 pounds, and is now suing his jailers for starving him. [Source: Obese Inmates Sues Over Weight Loss]

I use a rather new Mac Book Pro with the 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processors and fully loaded with 4GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. Yet every time Time Machine kicks in to do its routine backups, this machine takes such a performance hit I nearly go insane! I hate it so badly, I shut off the backup.

Granted, I keep at least 6 applications up and running all of the time, but dear god, this performance issue just shouldn't be!

Today the iTunes Store is 5 years old. In just five years Apple dominates all sources of music distribution, surpassing the previous king of the hill, Walmart, about a month ago! Predictions are that Apple may capture 25% of music world-wide within only 4 years! How quickly times can change. And I'm lovin' it!

But just a peek! The pictures are not that good. The house isn't really ready to be shot. But here are a few pictures to quiet the hungry masses! Click the picture below to visit the first photo album from Manhattan Beach, which includes a few shots in and around the house.

Yesterday was warm. The sun was setting. I was on the beach. Yes, time to be baptized in the Pacific Ocean. OK, so, it was more like a sprinkling than a full emersion! I am Methodist, after all.

I try to always credit the sources of the pictures I publish here. This is a picture I saw on Flickr (I think) some months ago. I don't have the who, what, when or where. But I thought it was a great shot of a cool building. If my aging memory serves me correctly, this is a picture of a new university building somewhere. If anyone knows, let me know so I can include the info.

I shot these pictures of my neighbor's Ferrari, a gorgeous car, just before leaving Atlanta. Now that my office is back up and running in California, and my camera equipment is back in circulation, I finally am posting them to the web. I've really missed not shooting!

What do you mean, you can't afford gas, a home, and now food? The bottom line of the article: the author, blames oil prices.

"Several factors contribute to higher food prices, analysts say, but none more than record prices for oil, which last week closed above $105 a barrel. Oil is not only driving up production and transportation costs, but also adding to demand for corn and soybeans, used to make alternative fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel."

He goes on to say, "The weak US dollar, at or near historic lows against the euro and other currencies, adds more pressure. Oil and other commodities trade in dollars, so when the dollar is worth less, producers demand higher prices to make up for the loss in value."

And, "As with energy, higher food costs cut into discretionary income that buys everything from cars to computers to movie tickets and drives the consumer-based US economy. Falling home values and a faltering stock market have battered consumer confidence, spurring a retrenchment in spending that is contributing to recent job losses and pulling the economy toward recession."

Hmm... if Robert the case, and I suspect he is, here comes inflation as the cost of transporting everything goes up and gets passed on to the consumer. When will we stop electing wealthy oil men to the White House?

So let me make a final prediction: the worst affect from the horrendous policies of this administration, in cahoots with the republican party, is still ahead--just in time for whatever new administration to be blamed.

And the cycle of irresponsible, non-accountable, non-responsive government will continue. Oh, but don't worry, your personal check from the federal government will be issued sooner. That will fix everything. Thanks, George.

Quotation source: The Boston Globe

Source: Bad Banana Blog
From Link: Ads of the World

This is a fascinating little test. I first began by shooting people I didn't mean to shoot, but once I got accustomed to the "game" I tried not to shoot anyone unless they had a gun. I tried to train my eye to only look at what each person had in his hand. Perhaps that is the reason my reaction time was slower than those in the article below.

All of the people are men. I wonder how sex would play into this?

So. How racist are you? That’s the question asked by an online psychology test by the University of Chicago. The test involves showing you a series of photographs of 100 black or white men, either holding guns or cellphones. You have to decide - in a split second - whether to shoot them or to holster your gun.

Nicholas D. Kristof, a (white) columnist of The New York Times took the test. And discovered this:

I shot armed blacks in an average of 0.679 seconds, while I waited slightly longer — .694 seconds — to shoot armed whites. Conversely, I holstered my gun more quickly when encountering unarmed whites than unarmed blacks.

Take the test yourself and you’ll probably find that you show bias as well. Most whites and many blacks are more quick to shoot blacks, no matter how egalitarian they profess to be.

Eric L. Hinton of Diversity Inc, who is black, also took the test, and found out the same thing:

But what concerns me is that, armed or not, I "shot" Black targets faster than I shot white targets. I shot Black armed targets at an average of 0.631 seconds versus white armed targets at 0.662. Even more disturbing - I shot Black unarmed targets at an average of 0.783 seconds versus white unarmed targets at 0.792.

Fractions of seconds? Yes, but still unsettling when you consider the real life implications of armed police officers who make these life and death decisions in real life situations as they encounter Black men on the street.

So, how would you do? Just how racist are you? Take the test and find out! Link

(I did horribly on the test - I shot practically everyone, black or white! Then I got nervous, and got shot by everyone else!)

[Source: How Racist Are You?]

"People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them."

- Dave Barry, author and humorist

[Source: Neatorama » Blog Archive » Quote: Dave Barry on Religion]

I saw this t-shirt on the Manhattan Beach pier this morning while walking:

Hmm... I guess this means do away with Microsoft?

This is the sixth time I've flown through Salt Lake City. The bizarre geology of the lake is gorgeous in a very outré way. During my last evening flight out of Salt Lake City, the sun was dramatically setting, casting a gorgeous glow on the snow capped mountains.

Today is the first time I've seen the mountains, still covered in snow, without their being elegantly draped in dense low hanging clouds. The area is just gorgeous––very picture worthy!

Errol has just finished a book, a NYT's article and a documentary about Abu Ghraib. The entire interview with Errol Morris (by Scott Tobias of A.V.Club) is well worth the read. Here are just a few great quotations.

I wish they'd just get it over with and make [Iraq] the 51st state, because I think it's the perfect red state: religious fundamentalists, lots of weaponry. How could you go wrong? We're already spending a significant fraction of our gross national product on the infrastructure; such as it is, on Iraq. Make it the 51st state and get it over with.

... the last paragraph tells you, "The President can do whatever he wants to do." The last paragraph tells you that you didn't have to read the 80-plus pages that proceeded it. Just read this last paragraph, the last couple of lines, which says the President can do what he damn well pleases. That's the memo. It's not about torture. Torture is the least of it. It's about how we fought a war 200-plus years ago to avoid having a king. We were supposed to be a constitutional democracy, and we've become, 200-plus years after this war, an absolute monarchy. How in hell did that happen, and where are the American people in all of this? I don't get it. It's weird. Everybody has heard the word "impeachment." Let's get on with it! I don't know what people are waiting for.

... Everyone thought this Democratic Congress in 2006 was going to be a watershed. Something different was going to happen. Maybe the hope is that this will pass and there will be a whole new administration soon, people can just pretend it didn't happen. "Hey, do you remember exactly what happened in the last eight or nine years?" "No, I can't really. Refresh my memory. What is it that did happen here?" [Laughs.] I think there's that wishful thinking that it will just vanish. It will disappear. I actually think that we have to in some way deal with what has happened. I feel it's really, really important for the country. I feel it's very important that someone be held accountable. My silver lining of the Torture Memo—I'm a misanthropic sort of guy—is I think that if the President can do anything… if he has that unfettered power to do anything he wants, absolutely anything, then he's responsible for everything. "Okay! Have it your way! If these are all your decisions, I think we should start to hold you responsible for making them."

Source: Scott Tobias' Interview with Errol Morris

What a shockingly novel thought--a new concept: hold politicians accountable for what they do?!

I really did! Here is an interesting read from Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch, including information about how Apple makes money from AT&T's phone plan charges to each customer every month!

Razr anyone? Motorola can’t even give those things away anymore. The once-proud company reported horrible earnings today, with sales down 21 percent and a net loss of $194 million. But the big takeaway was the 39 percent collapse in its mobile phone business. Mobile device revenues in the quarter dropped $2.1 billion compared to last year.

Coincidentally enough, that is almost exactly how much Apple made last quarter on iPhone sales. ...

[Source: Motorola’s Loss Is Apple’s Gain: That $2.1 Billion Sucking Sound Is Coming From The iPhone]

Dear, your dress looks lovely, but... I see a new round of rules for school dress code. Can you actually sit down in these things? So how long before these are popular in the wedding industry? And exactly how do you put it on? Is it assembled on you while you stand the whole time? How long does that take? How do you take it off?

Click each picture above to see a larger version.
More pictures of balloon dresses from Damn Cool Pics

Is Apple recession proof? Apple's Q2 results are announced:

Highlights, with comparisons to the year-ago quarter:

• $1.05 billion in profit, up from $770 million.
• Just under 2.3 million Macs sold — representing 51 percent unit growth and 54 percent revenue growth.
• 10.6 million iPods sold, up 1 percent (but 6 percent revenue-wise).
• 1.7 million iPhones sold.

★ [Source: Apple Reports Record Second Quarter Results: $1.05 Billion in Profit]

George W. Bush, wearing a facade of faith and morality, is the most inhumane president this nation has ever had. This ad, by Amnesty International, is powerfully done and very effective: condemning what George tells us is our moral imperative: torture through waterboarding. This president, hiding behind religion more than any president before him, remains, in my opinion, a morally bankrupt blight on the office he has held.

The ad, Stuff of Life, begins with ambient music highlighting the flow of refreshing water as it dances about in slow motion--you think you're watching a mineral water commercial. Not until you are well into the short film do you realize this water, the Stuff of Life, is being used to forcibly bring a victim near death through suffocation.

"The campaign is part of Amnesty International UK's 'unsubscribe' initiative launched in October last year that aims to gather support for human rights in the era of the 'war on terror'." I can't wait until January, when this nation gets to unsubscribe from the horror that has been this man's tenure in office! Click the image below to see the ad that will be played in theaters beginning May 9th.

OK everyone who needs to know: I now have a new cell phone number. My old cell phone number no longer works. If you need to know the new number, email me. Otherwise, I will send out an email to close friends by the end of the month.

Orwell was so visionary. When penning 1984, he clearly saw the lives we now live, lives which, in 1975, I could not comprehend ever happening in the nation! I have been astounded that US citizens, in what is alleged to be an open, democratic society, have allowed the surveillance machinery to go full bloom. A couple of years ago I posted that the average American on an average day is caught on surveillance 300 times!

Upon opening my bank accounts here in California, my money is frozen for 30 days because of the Patriot Act?! As my friend Pez always says: God Almighty! What have we come to in this land of fear?!

Mark these words: If we do not act to reverse the path down which we trod, things will more rapidly spin out of control.

UK Surveillance Laws Raise Privacy Concerns
by Vicki Barker

Morning Edition, April 21, 2008 · Local councils in Britain are using covert surveillance legislation designed to combat terrorism to investigate such petty offenses as under-age smoking and breaches of zoning regulations. One couple has gone public after learning that they were tailed for two weeks to verify that they actually lived within the boundaries of the school their 3-year-old attends.

[Source: UK Surveillance Laws Raise Privacy Concerns : NPR]

You are paying for HD through your cable provider, but you really aren't getting HD? This can not be good. Compression almost always leaves artifacts that are obvious to even the casual viewer.

I must say that having FIOS through Verizon has yielded excellent picture quality and super fast internet!

As cable TV companies pack ever more HD channels into limited bandwidth, some owners of pricey plasma, projector and LCD TVs are complaining that they're not getting the high-def quality they paid for. They blame the increased signal compression being used to squeeze three digital HD signals into the bandwidth of one analog station

[Source: HD enthusiasts crying foul over cable TV's crunched signals - Yahoo! News]

For my future reference, I'm putting the type of battery the cordless phones in the house require: Eveready ER-P510.

Now, hopefully, the next time I need the batteries replaced in the phones, I'll remember I wrote this post. But then , of course, the phones will be obsolete!

You just thought you were sane! It knows when you're looking at it and stops spinning. But the moment you take your eyes off of it...

The new "Get a Mac" commercials are just hysterical! The marketing department has really done an excellent job hitting core reasons why people should switch yet in this humorous, light-hearted theme. Click each picture below to see the two latest commercials.

If this is true, it sounds nothing short of absurd! I think the writing of public law is funded with public money and should therefore fall in the public domain! A state can not "own" the laws they write! Who comes up with this insanity? These guys are sounding even worse than the recording industry.

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud says, "The State of Oregon is sending out cease and desist letters to sites like Justia and Public.Resource.Org that have been posting copies of Oregon laws, known as the Oregon Revised Statutes.

We've sent Oregon back two letters. The first reviews the law and explains to the Legislative Counsel why their assertion of copyright over the state statutes is particularly weak, from both a common law perspective and from their own enabling legislation.

The position of the Legislative Counsel is that their public access obligations have been fulfilled by their web site. However, their web site has over 500,000 HTML errors, does not meet Section 508 accessibility requirements, has no metadata, as our second letter points out.

Particularly galling is the fact that Thomson West has also made a copy of these statutes and has done so without a commercial license, but the Legislative Counsel explicitly told Tim Stanley of Justia that they weren't going to send cease and desist letters to West. Evidently, it is much easier to pick on the little guys.

Oregon is not unique in asserting copyright over state law, but they are definitely one of the more aggressive in this kind of FUD campaign. Justia and Public.Resource.Org have decided this is an important issue to resolve and we're going to hold firm on this. Anybody else who is making a mirror of the Oregon law should drop me a line and let me know.

A Norway spruce growing in Sweden has a root system that has been growing for 9,550 years! The tree is only about 13 feet tall, but the trunk is not the first first one grown from the roots. Leif Kullman, professor at Umeå University led the team that discovered the tree’s age.

The spruce’s stems or trunks have a lifespan of around 600 years, “but as soon as a stem dies, a new one emerges from the same root stock,” Kullman explained. “So the tree has a very long life expectancy.”

The age of the root system was determined by radiocarbon dating.

Trees much older than 9,550 years would be impossible in Sweden, because ice sheets covered the country until the end of the last Ice Age around 11,000 years ago, Kullman noted.

Link

I often find that I live my life much too fast. I don't get to see it, feel it, hear it, feel it in any dimension with significant depth. A recent research study suggests that when people are rushed, we even fail to actualize our core values. But that's not what this post covers.

This little video is something of the beauty of life we can not see with our eyes because this event happens, naturally, faster than we can see.

Enjoy.

Everyone pretty much knows that the US economy is swirling in the toilet with inflation on the rise due to higher oil and food prices. (By the way, I read that world food prices have soared over 40%!) How does Fox News report this fact? "Inflation isn't as bad as some had anticipated."

In my mind this isn't journalism. It isn't news reporting. In my opinion this is attitude shaping (spin) designed to keep the masses passively content in a stupor designed to make the wealthy even wealthier.

I loathe the whole Fox money grubbing empire. The only time I see it is when it's blasting in some area I can't get away from, like the airport.

I missed this back in 2006. I guess it's just as well.

Call me liberal, but I guess I'm about the only person in the world that thinks this is immoral, this is literally theft by taking--every time you pull up to the gas pump. No one is worth this kind of money. And to get this kind of money by robbing people while raping the earth is nothing short of astounding to me.

When a person drives off from the gas pump without paying, we call that stealing. When Exxon charges insane prices at the pump we call that the American Dream.

Exxon is giving Lee Raymond one of the most generous retirement packages in history, nearly $400 million, including pension, stock options and other perks, such as a $1 million consulting deal, two years of home security, personal security, a car and driver, and use of a corporate jet for professional purposes.

Last November, when he was still chairman of Exxon, Raymond told Congress that gas prices were high because of global supply and demand.

"We're all in this together, everywhere in the world," he testified.

Raymond, however, was confronted with caustic complaints about his compensation.

"In 2004, Mr. Raymond, your bonus was over $3.6 million," Sen. Barbara Boxer said.

That was before new corporate documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that revealed Raymond's retirement deal and his $51.1 million paycheck in 2005. That's equivalent to $141,000 a day, nearly $6,000 an hour. It's almost more than five times what the CEO of Chevron made.

"I think it will spark a lot of outrage," said Sarah Anderson, a fellow in the global economy program at the Institute for Policy Studies, an independent think tank. "Clearly much of his high-level pay is due to the high price of gas."

[Source: ABC News: Oil: Exxon Chairman's $400 Million Parachute]

Must this persist?

Since I lived in Atlanta for 20 years, I really hadn't stopped to think about all of the things I knew in and about the area that I just took for granted: where the closest Subway shop is, the best place to buy this or that, the best clothes cleaners, where to get a haircut, etc.

While at the cleaners, I asked the girl waiting on me where the men go to get a haircut in Manhattan Beach. She said she really didn't know. She went to a different salon every time to get her hair cut--not much help.

I saw an Aveda sign in a hair salon and stopped in to inquire: $50 for a man's cut with a 6 week waiting list! Excuse me, but someone is doing too many drugs. I stopped at another hair salon that had a big Aveda sign. This salon was new: $40 for a man's cut, but the first cut is half price. Ahah! I was desperate. (And now I see why the girl at the cleaners goes to a different salon every time!)

For $20 I got a shoulder, neck and head massage, a haircut, and a skin treatment. They want your business! The little girl who cut my hair was adorable--very friendly and very touchy-feely. She does volunteer work with troubled teens through her church.

At any rate, I told her I wanted a conservative haircut. The picture you see here is how I walked out of the salon! It was hysterical. She asked me to show her how I normally style my hair in the mornings, but it was too late. She had already dried my hair as seen in the picture (yes, taken with my iPhone in a mirror). My hair is very obedient: the way it dries is the way it will be until it is washed again.

Maybe I'll show her how to style it next time. She is the first hair stylist to ever ask me to show her how to style my hair! None of them ever know how to do it!!

A bit weird

Scientists have solved one ethical dilemma by finding a way to make the equivalent of human embryonic stem cells without destroying human embryos. But a new ethical dilemma is looming. It may be possible to derive eggs and sperm from the stem cells. Will a child someday be born to a parent who started life as a stem cell line?

[Source: Ethical Questions Follow Stem Cell Advances]

So now we can't afford to pay our mortgage. We can't afford to buy gas to get to work. And we can't afford to eat.

I think it's time to cut some more taxes, don't you? Let's attack some more liberals. What celebrity needs some liposuction? Or even better, let's start another war!

Oil and Food Rises Stoke Inflation Fear
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
Published: April 15, 2008

Businesses continued to grapple with steep inflation last month as oil and food costs reached record highs, leaving Federal Reserve policy makers in a difficult spot ahead of their meeting later this month.

A gauge of prices paid by American producers jumped 1.1 percent in March, the Labor Department said on Tuesday, after a 0.3 percent increase in February. Gasoline and home heating oil prices surged.

[Source: Oil and Food Rises Stoke Inflation Fear - New York Times]

Click the image to see the impressive panorama of China's Great Wall at sunset.

Well, not exactly... but:

I've meant on several occasions to post about the breeze that floods the house most of the time. It was so cool today, I had to close the house up. It's fresh air from the Pacific Ocean. I love it. At times it comes through the house with a good bit of force causing even the heavy curtains to fly about in the wind.

The rain part is the water pressure from the shower. The plumber said Manhattan Beach has 70psi. The only other place with more water pressure (that I have experienced personally) is Rome, Italy. In fact, I thought the water pressure in Rome was going to take my skin off. I love intense water pressure in the shower!

Who knows what the impact of the web will be in this election, but Obama has dominated web poll results since the beginning. He obviously has some very savvy techie people working for him. Really, ultimately, the only thing that matters to me is that les mignons of satan (Republicans) aren't elected again.

We all know by now that if you could vote on the Internet, Barack Obama would already be president. His Website has always attracted more traffic than those of other candidates. Unaffiliated video-endorsement site YouBama popped up spontaneously to collect video endorsements from supporters. MoveOn.org is getting its constituents across the Web to rally behind him. Even Silicon Valley digerati like Marc Andreessen love him.

Today, Compete shares some more numbers (in table above) that show Obama beating Hillary Clinton 2 to 1 in Web traffic, 4 to 1 in Wikipedia article readers, and 10 to 1 in time viewers spend watching their videos on YouTube. Compete also measures something it calls “FaceTime,” which is teh amount of time spent with each candidate across several leading social networks and media sites (Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, MeetUp, YouTube). Obama trounces Clinton there as well, with 78 percent share versus 21 percent. And among Web surfers in Pennsylvania, which is holding a big primary next Tuesday, twice as many people are visiting Obama’s official Website than Clinton’s.

This doesn’t necessarily mean Obama is going to win Pennsylvania. The Web population still skews younger than the general electorate, but his strength on the Web is definitely one of Obama’s competitive advantages.

We flirt with that which we know not. Who oversees such risk management?

The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.

But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Although it sounds bizarre, the case touches on a serious issue that has bothered scholars and scientists in recent years — namely how to estimate the risk of new groundbreaking experiments and who gets to decide whether or not to go ahead.

[From Neatorama » Blog Archive » Dudes Sue the Large Hadron Collider to Stop Total World Annihilation]

Takes me a second to get my head around this!

Those two amazing sets of stairs are from the Didden Village project by Dutch architectural firm MVRDV. The project itself is a rooftop addition in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The exterior is a stark contrast to its surrounding (and may not be to everyone’s tastes), as you can see in the link below, but the interior stairs are amazing!

Link

[From Awesome Floating Staircases]

Finally, the undeniable is being stated openly!

This marks a dramatic deterioration for Bush. Previously he wasn't viewed in the most positive terms, but there was a consensus that he wasn't the "worst of the worst" either. That was in the spring of 2004. In the meantime, Bush has established himself as the torture president, the basis for his invasion of Iraq has been exposed as a fraud, the Iraq War itself has gone disastrously, the nation's network of alliances has faded, and the economy has gone into a tailspin-not to mention the bungled handling of relief for victims of hurricane Katrina. In 2004, only 12 percent of historians were ready to place Bush dead last.

It would be difficult to identify a President who, facing major international and domestic crises, has failed in both as clearly as President Bush,” concluded one respondent. “His domestic policies,” another noted, “have had the cumulative effect of shoring up a semi-permanent aristocracy of capital that dwarfs the aristocracy of land against which the founding fathers rebelled; of encouraging a mindless retreat from science and rationalism; and of crippling the nation’s economic base.

Not to mention civil liberties and the Patriot Act, this poll of 109 historians ranks the man dead last in the heap of political deadbeats! As I've made no secret of my loathing of his appalling tenure in office, I think it will take us decades to undo the damage he and is republican cronies have done to our nation! I can't wait for the nation to get on with the business of recovery--from him!

Sounds interesting...

Cancer Therapy Without Side Effects Nearing Trials
By Jennifer Laloup 04.13.08

A promising new cancer treatment that may one day replace radiation and chemotherapy is edging closer to human trials.

Kanzius RF therapy attaches microscopic nanoparticles to cancer cells and then "cooks" tumors inside the body with harmless radio waves.

Based on technology developed by Pennsylvania inventor John Kanzius, a retired radio and TV engineer, the treatment has proven 100 percent effective at killing cancer cells while leaving neighboring healthy cells unharmed. It is currently being tested at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

“I don’t want to give people false hope,” said Dr. Steve Curley, the professor leading the tests, “but this has the potential to treat a wide variety of cancers.”

[From Cancer Therapy Without Side Effects Nearing Trials ]

This is a fascinating take on the state of things in Windows World. I wonder how accurate it is!

Gartner analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald told a conference audience yesterday that Microsoft’s Windows product is collapsing and must make radical changes to its operating system or risk becoming a has-been.

They specifically pointed out the slow adoption rate by businesses - just 6% to date - and the fact that the Vista code base is so large. That means changes take years, and only high end computers can really take advantage of it anyway.

For most early adopters (and all Mac users), the browser is increasingly the only operating system that matters anyway. Windows isn’t really that relevant any more just because of the increasing utility of online applications like Google Docs, which competes with Microsoft Office. Vista could be perfect and it still wouldn’t matter. The fact that it is flawed only makes the situation worse.

Microsoft makes a ton of revenue on sales of software that sit on the computer. $15 billion a year for Windows alone, and another $16 billion for Office and Exchange Server in 2007. That’s 60% of Microsoft’s total revenue, and profits from those groups float the rest of the company. Microsoft isn’t a viable company without their consumer and business desktop software profits.

The real question isn’t “What can Microsoft do to fix their Windows product?” but rather “Even If Windows and Office were perfect, would it be enough to keep Microsoft relevant in the medium term?” I think the answer to that latter question might be “nope.” And that, of course, is why they want Yahoo so badly. Online advertising revenue is their only real hope of long term survival.

Here I sit for a bit of a layover in Utah. This is really the first chance I've had to do any blogging. (Truth be told, there are several other things I should be doing first even now!) I've been traveling a great deal this month on top of the move. Yesterday was the first day in a long time I just did nothing, except take a nap to recover from being up over 24 hours due to travel delays through Atlanta. Because I change time zones almost daily, get up at 4AM frequently to catch early morning flights, etc., my internal clock is off.

On a lighter note, I saw a guy riding his skateboard down the strand on Manhattan Beach last evening. That's a fairly common sight. What made it a picture worthy moment was the fact that his little dog was sitting up straight on the board between the guy's feet, riding on the skateboard with his ears flopping in the wind. The little critter obviously enjoys riding the skateboard. I wished I had my camera with me, but, alas, it has yet to be unpacked.

The people in our neighborhood continue to amaze me with their friendliness. The last time I knew people to be so friendly was when I was a young child growing up on 6th Avenue where everyone seemed to know everyone.

The house is still a wreck with numerous unpacked boxes. I have learned, the hard way, that the pace and intensity at which I live life is dependent on essential structures that support the complexity of my lifestyle. At the present, with so many of those routines, organizational structures, and support systems broken, I find myself working with significantly less efficiency, and my is life imbued with a higher levels of stress! As a result, my patience grows very thin at times. I keep reminding myself that this will all pass as things come together again, hopefully sooner rather than later.

My little house in Decatur has now been sold (think unending faxes, emails, and phone calls, frantically searching through boxes for this or that piece of paper, etc.). Hopefully the new owner will enjoy it as much as I did. I'm glad I will not have to deal with renting that property from California.

Clock Picture Source: `Bobesh, Link

Holding Ctrl-Shift when mousing over the Dock toggles magnification mode temporarily.