Category: Rant

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rePost::Making Light: Peter Watts, distinguished Canadian SF writer, arrested by US border police while trying to re-enter Canada

Peter Watts, distinguished Canadian SF writer, arrested by US border police while trying to re-enter Canada
Posted by Patrick at 12:51 PM * 262 comments
From Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing: Dr. Peter Watts, Canadian science fiction writer, beaten and arrested at US border.
I already linked to this from the sidebar, but on reflection, I have a little more to say.
First, it’s worth noting that comment #2 to the Boing Boing post observes “And now the inevitable ‘we don’t know the whole story so we shouldn’t pass judgments but he probably did something to provoke them’ comments can commence.” Indeed, there seems to be a kind of person who makes it their business to hover around at sites like Boing Boing or Consumerist to explain that probably the police had no choice but to beat up that guy, or that we don’t know that Wal-Mart abused that customer, since after all it’s her word against theirs. And indeed, comment #5 shows up right on schedule: “It’s my observation that most of these cases begin with a person who becomes belligerent when asked to do something he doesn’t want to do (get out of the car, step away from the car, etc.) These officers may very well have overstepped their bounds, but I doubt very seriously that Watts is completely innocent.”
For what it’s worth, I don’t know exactly what happened, but a couple of things seem pretty evident to me. One is that this wasn’t a routine border search. Rather, American border guards in Port Huron, Michigan demanded to search Watts’s car as he was leaving the US for his native Canada. This is very squirrelly. We’re conducting exit searches now?
via Making Light: Peter Watts, distinguished Canadian SF writer, arrested by US border police while trying to re-enter Canada.

This is nothing. If you see a checkpoint here and a car similar to yours in model is flagged one wrong move and you’d get sprayed with bullets or drugs get planted on your car.
Hope people can think more clearly. We give law enforcement people more power to combat something without stopping to consider that we are only helping enemy we are fighting. To foster a society without trust, full of paranoia and other fucking attituted related with fear and insecurity. We cannot let the terrorist win.

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Advice::The Psychological Immune System | PsyBlog

In the same paper Gilbert and colleagues report studies on people getting dumped by their partners, told their personalities are deficient and academics failing to get tenure. The pattern repeats: people think it’s going to feel bad, but generally it’s not as bad as they expect, and people recover quicker than they predict.
The merciful unconscious
The very fact that we don’t seem to notice our psychological immune system is probably the only reason it works at all. After all, in order to feel better we have to conveniently forget some important facts, such as how much we wanted the job we didn’t get, loved the partner who walked out or were enjoying the ice cream we just dropped.
But the good news is when life deals out its cruelest blows, our unconscious will be working overtime to find the upside. That’s why life often doesn’t turn out to feel as bad as we think. Soon enough most of us are on our merry way again with a bounce in our step, all thanks to the merciful but covert work of the psychological immune system.
via The Psychological Immune System | PsyBlog.

I understand how powerful this knowledge is but the fear is still there.
I hope I am not alone when I say that the fear of not getting what you want is one of the main reason that I sometimes or probably the majority of times I do not go after that which I want.  We really need to convince ourselves that, It’s not going to be as bad as you think! The earth will not end after she rejects you (well at least for a week/month or so it seem to have ended). Life goes on even if you got fired. The birds will still sing even if you are alone. See it’s like the rich getting richer. The people who fear less get to live more. The people who fear more live less. A friend told me that I lacked faith because I was always too prepared. This advice is for me. Fear less. Have faith. Things are seldom as bad/more bad than you expect it to be!

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Impeach The Comelec ::Pleasure and subversion: Psychiatric Association of the Taliban

Impeach the Comelec

Psychiatric Association of the Taliban
Dear Editor
Is there anyway to impeach the following Comelec Comisssioners: Nicodemo T. Ferrer, Lucinito N. Tagle and Elias R. Yusoph?
They must be impeached because they have openly decided to turn the country into a religious state instead of a secular one. I am referring of course to their decision to outlaw Ladlad on the basis of upholding religious beliefs. They quote the Bible and the Koran forgetting that they should consult the Philippine Constitution instead. Only in the Philippines would we have high government officials who state that obedience to religious beliefs trumps other more cogent legal provisions as a basis for policy.
If stupidity were a basis for impeachment, the proceedings would be quite short. Their display of ignorance of current scientific knowledge on sexuality is quite appalling. They should have taken the simple expedient of asking any psychiatrist or psychologist who upholds the standards of organizations like the World Health Organization or the American Psychiatric and Psychological Associations. They would have been told that homosexuality was delisted as a psychological pathology more than 30 years ago. They either did not bother to read for themselves or consulted the psychiatric association of the Taliban when they decided that homosexuality is an abnormality.
As a Filipino citizen who is neither Christian nor Muslim; as a practitioner and teacher in psychology and sexuality; as someone who cares that we do not look like backward bigots to the world community; I urge the impeachment of these men who have violated morals, scientific truths and our laws against discrimination.
I am so upset. I'm gay starting today and until Ladlad gets accredited.
Sylvia Estrada Claudio, M.D. PhD.
Director, University Center for Women’s Studies
Professor of Women and Development Studies
University of the Philippines
Posted by Sylvia Estrada Claudio at 4:08 AM
via Pleasure and subversion: Psychiatric Association of the Taliban.

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rePost::Charter Cities: Meta-Rules: The Success of Congestion Pricing in Stockholm

This is a big issue for me , I repeat/paraphrase what is said below::”Drivers do not pay the full social cost of crowding congested urban roads during peak hours”. I slept through 1 hour of traffic from Commonwealth to Mega Mall. When I take the cab at night It takes a good driver less than 30 minutes to get home. We live in a world where our actions affect others this is the reason I confuse people when I say I am libertarian in principle but is very pro regulation. We want to maximize fun/happiness/freedom for everyone, and we cannot do this if not all social costs are front center. If we continue to be blind from these social cost. My 30 minutes lost everyday from traffic because buying a car, and more so driving a car is very inexpensive relative to what people can afford. When oil hit $100-120 per barrel level the streets were less congested, my commute was reduced by 15 minutes (although I noticed a lot more people were riding the buses and MRT/LRT). The fuel cost is only a factor not even directly involved with congestion, and the effect is noticeable to me. Good public policy is what is needed!

The logic of congestion pricing is fairly straightforward. Urban areas tend to have wasteful levels of congestion during peak commuting hours. Each car that enters the roadway contributes to congestion, polluting city air and increasing overall trip time. Describing the work of the late urban economist John Meyer, Edward Glaeser makes the succinct case for pricing road access:
Unless drivers pay the full social cost of crowding congested urban roads during peak hours, then those roads will remain overused and society will pay a large cost in wasted time.
Some cities tackle the problem by cordoning-off their centers and using electronic tolling to collect congestion fees. The fees rise during peak hours and decline during off-peak hours. To avoid the charge, some people commute during non-peak hours, some people carpool, and some others commute by train, bus, bicycle, or metro. Drivers who pay-up experience less congestion and shorter commute times. For higher income drivers, the benefits from less congestion outweigh the fee. The challenge for city officials is to ensure that people who stop driving end up better off as well. It’s possible to use revenue from the charge to upgrade public transport services, improving the commute everyone.
via Charter Cities: Meta-Rules: The Success of Congestion Pricing in Stockholm.

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The New Wall

It’s the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Wow, I was only a child then, but even I knew that it was a momentous event.
Now as a new decade approaches a new wall has already been built, the battle lines are fuzzy and the enemy would be much harder to defeat.
It is funny in a perverse way. Capitalism suffers from its excesses, and there is at least a considerable fraction of people who agree that left to its own devices capitalism fails (I dare to say that more people were convinced of capitalisms problems by the recent economic crisis rather than the former soviet union).
Democracy is heading to a collision course with religion. Not a specific religion but with the practice of religion. It is a question I mull but cannot seem to get any headway in. I just hope we solve this within our lifetimes.  In a way as hard problems tend to be, I don’t know where I stand when the collision happens, all that I know is that it probably will happen.

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rePost::Demography, growth and the environment: Falling fertility | The Economist

This is a minor rant.
A couple of weeks ago Manny Villar was asked the question

Your thoughts on the RH Bill? Do you think it’s the solution to our population problem?
Which he answered with:
Villar: Let’s look at this in a different perspective. Instead of trying to control population aggressively by trying to legislate bills that will prevent more birth, let’s use the huge population we have now to our advantage. You know what they say about having a huge population, take China for example, they’ve suddenly become an economic giant because the huge number of people alone can greatly influence the economy. Because we have huge population, the upside is we can be great! Manny Villar’s vision for the Philippines: I want to foster and promote a culture of competitiveness and entrepreneurial revolution.

This was met with derision in places like twitter and Facebook.
I even read a post: “Population is not a problem by villar, like water is not wet”.
The thing is at least on this Villar is more in the right than a lot of people who get their views someplace and never seem to re-evaluate these views. People we have a brain , use it please!

Today’s fall in fertility is both very large and very fast. Poor countries are racing through the same demographic transition as rich ones, starting at an earlier stage of development and moving more quickly. The transition from a rate of five to that of two, which took 130 years to happen in Britain—from 1800 to 1930—took just 20 years—from 1965 to 1985—in South Korea. Mothers in developing countries today can expect to have three children. Their mothers had six. In some countries the speed of decline in the fertility rate has been astonishing. In Iran, it dropped from seven in 1984 to 1.9 in 2006—and to just 1.5 in Tehran. That is about as fast as social change can happen.
via Demography, growth and the environment: Falling fertility | The Economist.

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rePost::The Twilight Saga: New Moon Spawns IMDb Battle of the Sexes Turf War | /Film

Mom’s want to be 16 year olds and 16 year olds want to be mom. Priceless. Interesting yung graphs click through!

The funniest thing about the rankings is the demographics behind the votes The average Male user rating is a 3.3, while the average female user rating is an 8.0. And while females under 18 rate the film a 8.7, the most popular demo is the “Twilight Mom”, females aged 30-44, which have given the film an average rating of a 9.9. Wow… Full graphs after the jump.
via The Twilight Saga: New Moon Spawns IMDb Battle of the Sexes Turf War | /Film.

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rePost::Gojko Adzic » Joe the Developer doesn’t need a certificate

There is a concept called code smell, and in that spirit there is also I believe a company smell and if a company won’t hire you because of a lack of certification, well that is a company you probably shouldn’t work for. I’ve continuously stated that If I get an IT related certification I probably have given up or no longer trust my own skills. I hope I can follow through with this declaration!

There is a huge difference between training and certification. I guess that anyone, even Joe the Most-Experienced-Developer-In-The-World, would benefit from a few days of training by Ron Jeffries and most other people arguing for certification now. But that is because these people really have something to say about the way software is built and if you are looking for gems of knowledge that is the right place to look. Developers should take training to get that knowledge, not to get a piece of paper that is supposedly going to help them get a job (and it will not, at least in any company that really cares about development). Training is there to help you get started with a new practice or fill in the gaps. It is not the end of the journey but quite the opposite, just a beginning on the path to knowledge.
via Gojko Adzic » Joe the Developer doesn’t need a certificate.

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rePost::Poor Propaganda (1)::Pinoy Penman

maybe I’m jaded enough or probably I just don’t care anymore, but when someone is hungry, the stomach doesn’t care if the food was from another poor guy, a simple person, a company wanting media mileage or a saint; That said  corporation, individual donors sometimes care to whom they give their donations to, and if someone like Kris Aquino or other stars need to front for a foundation to open the wallets of these donors, We go where the money is.  we laud people who help. This brings to mind a scene in “In My Life” where Vilma plays the domineering mom who his son can never seem to please.

The immediate spur was a text message I received just hours ago from an anonymous sender, whose phone number I’ll keep to myself for now. It said: “ABS CBN reported to have received more than 100-Million pesos worth of donations in cash & in kind but they have only released around 130 thousand of relief bags. Assuming that each bag contained 100 pesos worth of goods, that is only 13-Million pesos. There are more than 80-million pesos worth of goods and cash in their possession still. And why does ABS CBN have to wait for Kris Aquino and their stars to be the one to distribute these relief goods?”
Now, I’m no friend of the network or of any network—I generally mistrust giant organizations—although I have to admit having some good personal friends at ABS-CBN, and to appearing now and then on ANC as an unpaid resource person on everything from Macintosh machines to cultural scandals. But I had to ask myself, where was this coming from, and why? Why was anyone trying to put down ABS-CBN, which took a leading role in the Ondoy and Pepeng relief effort, at a time when people were properly focused on getting help from whatever source to whoever needed it most? What was ABS-CBN supposed to be doing with all those bags of noodles in its possession—hoard them for its own use?
The ridiculous and ill-timed message—clearly a cheap shot from a personal or corporate adversary—was just another reminder to me of how mean-spirited and (to use a word I’ve been employing a lot lately) snarky we’ve become. It’s a common hazard in this Age of the Rant, which I wrote about two years ago in my piece here on the “anti-rant rant.” For anything you do or say, there’s always someone out there with some vile and nasty retort, especially if it can be launched behind the guiltless anonymity of the Internet or of SMS. (I texted the sender back to ask “Who is this please?” but never, of course, got a reply.)
One thing you learn from the Internet is that the world is full of idle, unhappy people—curmudgeons, killjoys, and crackpots who can’t wait for an opportunity to make you as miserable as they are. When I recently wrote about my bumbling attempt to find a suitable birthday present for Beng, and eventually gifting her with a box of imported Spanish soap, I got a message from a reader castigating me for not being nationalistic enough to give her locally made lather; didn’t I know that I was harming Philippine industry, etc. etc? Presumably, this fellow didn’t type out that message on a Taiwanese computer while cooling his fiery Filipino spirit with a gulp of American cola.
via Pinoy Penman.