rePost: Growing Old:Who Knew?: Hendrik Hertzberg: Online Only: The New Yorker

I’m 25, turning 26 in about 6 months. Why am I having thoughts on dreading old age?

My first reaction was indignation: Et tu, Who? But that was an old reflex, grown feeble with the passing years. It’s been a while since I could yell “Sellout” with any real conviction. Anyway, The Who’s days of overt rebellion are long gone. Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey were Kennedy Center honorees last month, standing alongside Barbra Streisand, George Jones, and George W. Bush, among others.
My second reaction was a suspicion that maybe Townshend hasn’t completely lost his subversive touch after all. Maybe he’s just redirected it inward. “Hope I die before I get old” a line included in the sixty-second version has a certain ironic, shamefaced piquancy now that the spokesmusicians for the sixties are in their sixties. That hope for a quick, Hendrix-like demise has been dashed, along with The Who’s retirement portfolio, if theirs is like everybody else’s. But renting out an antique anthem of rebellion isn’t just a way to ensure that the money will be there to pay for an assisted living facility, it’s also a subtly devastating comment on where and how our g-g-generation ended up. Good one, Pete
Who Knew?: Hendrik Hertzberg: Online Only: The New Yorker.

rePost:Sensible Amish Rules In Technology Adoption: The Technium: Amish Hackers

I’m a geek thus I try the newest shiny thing available, I muck around daily builds/ beta builds etc/ buy robot kits etc, How could I say the Amish rules are sensible?
Simply put I try my best to see where I stand. I constantly ask myself why/how/when/where I am changing. I constanly evaluate myself in how technology changes me and my interactions with people. In a way I follow these rules but with a faster turnover.
An example of this is how I resisted having a phone, when I realized that because of phones people tend to have less respect for meeting times/appointments etc. It took me a long time to grow accustomed to fluid meeting times etc. I used to never be late at anything I am usually 30 minutes to an hour early for anything, but not I see my habits have been changed.
more thoughts on this later!

The Amish are steadily adopting technology — at their pace. They are slow geeks. As one Amish man told Howard Rheingold, “We don’t want to stop progress, we just want to slow it down,” But their manner of slow adoption is instructive.
* 1) They are selective. They know how to say “no” and are not afraid to refuse new things. They ban more than they adopt.
* 2) They evaluate new things by experience instead of by theory. They let the early adopters get their jollies by pioneering new stuff under watchful eyes.
* 3) They have criteria by which to select choices: technologies must enhance family and community and distance themselves from the outside world.
* 4) The choices are not individual, but communal. The community shapes and enforces technological direction.
The Technium: Amish Hackers.

rePost: Excelletn SuggestionHow the Ad Recession Could Improve the Web – Finance Blog – Felix Salmon – Market Movers – Portfolio.com

Agreed!

People read from one line to the next. If you can’t read the line above the line you’re reading, it feels odd, and you can lose track of the narrative. When you’re reading a book, it’s almost instantaneous to flip a page, but with a website, the time taken to click on the “next” link and wait for the page to reload is much longer. What’s more, all that finding the link and clicking takes you out of the narrative — and, of course, makes it much more likely that you’ll disappear off somewhere else entirely, just like newspaper readers generally fail to read beyond the jump.
The multiple-pages problem is so annoying, indeed, that many bloggers, including myself, make it a point to always link to a “single-page format” or “print version” of the article instead. That’s not always possible, however, and what’s more the print version often lacks important navigation, multimedia, and other hypertext components.
Most annoying, for a blogger, is when you’re quoting a bit of an article which is on, say, page three. Do you link to page three, or to page one? Neither is particularly pleasant.
Every time I go to a website like the NYT or The Big Money, the need to hunt around for the “single page” button and click on it and wait for the page to reload makes me hate the site just a tiny bit. For really gruesome offenders like Time, I simply don’t read a lot of their listicles, no matter how good they are, because the multiple-page format makes them all but unreadable. Now that the need to maximize inventory has disappeared, maybe this whole annoying thing will go away.
How the Ad Recession Could Improve the Web – Finance Blog – Felix Salmon – Market Movers – Portfolio.com.

-rePost: Flip Pride Simpsons Editions : GMANews.TV – D'oh: Simpsons' animator is Emmy-winning Filipino – Pinoy Abroad – Official Website of GMA News and Public Affairs – Latest Philippine News – BETA

I take back all my annoing statements that the simpsons is no longer funny! Mabuhay Kababayan!

D’oh: Simpsons’ animator is Emmy-winning Filipino
PASCKIE PASCUA, Philippine News
02/16/2009 | 11:24 AM
Espanola, center, shows off his 2008 Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program for his work on ‘The Simpsons.’ GMANews.TV
LOS ANGELES — Meet Jess Espanola, the Emmy award-winning assistant director of the popular animated TV show, The Simpsons. He is also the first native Filipino to win such a prestigious award, deemed as the television counterpart of the Oscars.
Espanola, 49, won for the episode, “Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind,” which was broadcast on December 16, 2007 on FOX. The episode won last year’s Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour). The show’s director is Chuck Sheetz, who also works on “King of the Hill.”
GMANews.TV – D’oh: Simpsons’ animator is Emmy-winning Filipino – Pinoy Abroad – Official Website of GMA News and Public Affairs – Latest Philippine News – BETA.

Fears From The Periphery:Niall Ferguson – An imaginary retrospective of 2009

You hear it in the news, and people repeat it to either sound smart or at least informed. To me it is just noise. There is probably a correlation to the confidence of a people versus the performance of its economy, it may even well be causal, but Whenever I hear anyone sprouting something like “We are not that affected by the global financial crisis”, or even worse the people who sound so matter of factly “We are immune to this crisis” then points out the activity in malls etc, I don’t know what to think anymore. We aren’t like franklin richards (son of Reed and Sue Richards of the Fantastic Force) we cannot will reality. We nudge it, coerce and push maybe but that is what we do. willing it is just part of it, we create reality through will and action, none is good without the other. The way I talk betrays my need for accuracy when making sweeping statements or even statements, more so for things that are not too easily grasped, with little study or even extensive study. We must not speak to the crowds but always try to push the debate forward.

This asymmetric character of the global crisis – the fact that the shocks were even bigger on the periphery than at the epicentre – had its disadvantages for the US, to be sure. Any hope that America could depreciate its way out from under its external debt burden faded as 10-year yields and the dollar held firm. Nor did American manufacturers get a second wind from reviving exports, as they would have done had the dollar sagged. The Fed’s achievement was to keep inflation in positive territory – just. Those who had feared galloping inflation and the end of the dollar as a reserve currency were confounded.
Niall Ferguson – An imaginary retrospective of 2009.

rePost: Petzal: The Rules of Gunfighting | Field & Stream

February 04, 2009
Petzal: The Rules of Gunfighting
Normally, this blog is dedicated to peaceful pursuits. However, SFC Frick speaks much wisdom. I am giving him a meritorious promotion to Command Sergeant Major (E-9).
(For more on this subject, visit our list of the five best gunfights of all time).
Drill Sergeant Joe B. Fricks Rules For A Gunfight
23. Your number one option for personal security is a lifelong commitment to avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation.

Petzal: The Rules of Gunfighting | Field & Stream.

Going to Kuala Lumpur!

Official seal of Kuala Lumpur
Image via Wikipedia

hehe,
I just booked tickets to Kuala Lumpur, Now just have to find return flights either from singapore or from KL.
Chuck is presenting a paper in June on an asian math conference and he invited me to tag along.
I didn’t even bat an eye! Yes!!!
I’m singing to my self right now! I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it come on come one! YEAH!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

-rePost: Remember when Arguing-Donkeylicious: The Difference Between Analogies And Counterexamples

Especially hate it when people do the sneaky thing and try to refute you by saying how weak an analogy is when you are giving a counterexample, especially hate it when the person you are talking to seems to either not care or doesn’t understand. Read the whole thing it is short and you would probably learn a thing or two.

Strive to give sound arguments, and to show that other people’s arguments aren’t sound. Use counterexamples to argue against general claims. Don’t fuck around with analogies. That’s how it’s done.
Donkeylicious: The Difference Between Analogies And Counterexamples.