Category: rePosts

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rePost::Where Does My Money Go? » Data

Data
All the data we’ve extracted and cleaned is available on google docs linked from our summary spreadsheet.
The majority of our present data comes from the Public Expenditure Statistical Analysis (PESA) which is the highest level breakdown of Government spending. However, we aim to have information at a much more granular level down to the lowest levels of government expenditure.
An introduction to our material with details of what we’re working and where we need help can be found here.
If have ideas for data we should incorporate and where we can find it please let us know using the form below.
via Where Does My Money Go? » Data.

the visualization is here:
http://www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/prototype/
This is cool, wish we could do this to data from the philippines.
If I can find out where I can get this data for free. probably either from the NSO (National Statistics Office) or Possibly Congress/Senate archives. I don’t know but I am putting this on my todo list!!

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rePost:: You make school a perfect misery

Mr Broome
Dear Sir
I write this letter for the good of myself and other boys. Instead of you teachers making school a pleasure you make it a perfect misery to those who happen to be a little backward. Referring to myself, I can say that I never did like school but since I came to Rockdale I have just dreaded the thought of school. This, may I say, has all come from your sneering and poking fun at those who are not quite so well on as others. If a boy happens to have a few mistakes instead of you trying to help him in his difficulty you look over his slate, you either cane him, or spell out aloud his foolish mistakes before over 100 boys who are always ready to make fun. This is why there are so many boys who are always ready to play the truant. And therefore instead of me looking forward to school days I just long for the time when I shall receive a sitificut saying that I may leave school. And as manhood draws on I shall look back on my schooldays as a period of misery instead of a period of happiness.
A Margett
Scholar at (Inferior?) Rockdale Public School
via Letters of Note: You make school a perfect misery.

Life is hard enough for us to make fun of each other.
Life is hard enough that we shouldn’t try to make it any harder on other people.
Quash the need to feel superior. (Being superior is different from needing to feel superior).
Do not listen to the that voice that tells you to pick on other people.
Do not even care if anybody is picking on you.

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rePost::Avatar :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews

Avatar
BY ROGER EBERT / December 11, 2009
Cast & Credits
Jake Sully Sam Worthington
Neytiri Zoe Saldana
Grace Sigourney Weaver
Col. Miles Quaritch Stephen Lang
Trudy Chacon Michelle Rodriguez
Parker Selfridge Giovanni Ribisi
Norm Spellman Joel David Moore
Moat CCH Pounder
Eytukan Wes Studi
Tsu’tey Laz Alonso
Dr. Max Patel Dileep Rao
Corporal Lyle Wainfleet Matt Gerald
20th Century Fox presents film written and directed by James Cameron. Running time: 163 minutes. MPAA rating: PG-13 (for intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking).
Watching “Avatar,” I felt sort of the same as when I saw “Star Wars” in 1977. That was another movie I walked into with uncertain expectations. James Cameron’s film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his “Titanic” was. Once again, he has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an extraordinary film. There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely.
“Avatar” is not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It’s a technical breakthrough. It has a flat-out Green and anti-war message. It is predestined to launch a cult. It contains such visual detailing that it would reward repeating viewings. It invents a new language, Na’vi, as “Lord of the Rings” did, although mercifully I doubt this one can be spoken by humans, even teenage humans. It creates new movie stars. It is an Event, one of those films you feel you must see to keep up with the conversation.
via Avatar :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews.

Hmm, I was really obsessing on the fact that we have the Metro Manila Film Fest this Dec 25 to the 1st week of January. Was wondering how I would be able to watch this at least twice. Hope it is as good as it is said. Need to watch this at IMAX. I’m babbling. I am really excited!!
On James Cameron being such a hippie, we need someone like cameron to counteract micheal bay , enough said!

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Funny::AT&T: Strictly for losers

It gets worse. Cringester A. H. swears he saw the words “You’re a Loser” flash across his screen seconds before the official “Sorry; you’re not an instant winner today” graphic displays. Sure enough, perusing that image’s properties shows the alternate text that will appear if your browser can’t display it: “You’re a Loser.”
I am not at all surprised. When you treat your customers with this much contempt, you can’t think of them as anything but losers. I don’t see how Apple can continue its exclusive relationship with AT&T for much longer. It’s becoming an embarrassment.
via AT&T: Strictly for losers.

Companies like this should not be allowed to continue existing.

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rePost::Watch the 1967 Bob Hope special, save America's public domain videos Boing Boing

So Carl’s pitch is simple: Watch some awesome public domain videos and do good for the world.
Now, Carl Malamud sez, “In preparation for my testimony on the future of the National Archives before the House Oversight Committee, we forked out another $461 and uploaded 28 more government videos. I’m trying to show that people care about this stuff, so I’ll report the total number of views to the Congress. This batch has some amazing stuff. In addition to the Bob Hope Christmas Special, there are documentaries about the Manhattan Rhythm Kings, the Cambodian Royal Ballet, and James Audubon. If you’re into spooks, don’t miss the CIA’s True Stories, a special on Mind Control and Hallucination, and KGB Connections.”
via Watch the 1967 Bob Hope special, save America’s public domain videos Boing Boing.

nice excuse to watch some videos in youtube!!!!
their youtube channel here

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RIP::Paul Samuelson, R.I.P. – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com

Paul Samuelson, R.I.P.
Oh, my. Paul Samuelson has died. He had a long, good life; yet he will be sorely missed.
It’s hard to convey the full extent of Samuelson’s greatness. Most economists would love to have written even one seminal paper — a paper that fundamentally changes the way people think about some issue. Samuelson wrote dozens: from international trade to finance to growth theory to speculation to well, just about everything, underlying much of what we know is a key Samuelson paper that set the agenda for generations of scholars.
And he was a wonderfully down-to-earth human being besides. For a number of years I shared an office suite with him and Bob Solow; he always had time to talk, and was completely without airs.
via Paul Samuelson, R.I.P. – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.

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Learned Today::The .Plan: A Quasi-Blog: More negative evidence on stretching

Didn’t stretch when I played basketball earlier this afternoon. I didn’t have the time, this was somewhat comforting. PS I was able to do some warmups so the evidence is for what I did! hehehe!

More negative evidence on stretching
For Dr. [Stephen] Thacker's paper “The Impact of Stretching on Sports Injury Risk: A Systematic Review of the Literature,” he and his colleagues pored over nearly 100 other published medical studies on the subject. Their key conclusions: stretching does increase flexibility; the highest-quality studies indicate that this increased flexibility doesn't prevent injuries; few athletes need extreme flexibility to perform their best (perhaps just gymnasts and figure skaters); and more injuries would be prevented by better warmups, by strength training, and by balance exercises, than by stretching.
via The .Plan: A Quasi-Blog: More negative evidence on stretching.

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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::Use the wastebasket « What’s new

One has to know when one should be persistent and patient, and when one should be pragmatic and realistic; stubbornly working away at a dead end is not the most efficient use of your time, and publishing every last scrap of your work is not always the best way to meet the standards of quality you expect from your publications (though sometimes it is still worth making your partial successes available in some format). Of course, in today’s digital age it is cheap and easy to backup all your work, and you should certainly do this before performing major surgery on any paper.
via Use the wastebasket « What’s new.

I’ve always had a problem with balance. In a sense excess, persistence or resignation has always been what I’m about, Always about extremes. Hope I can learn to regulate myself one day!