Defending elitism

Oh my god, I haven’t been writing much lately. My apologies. I promise to amend the situation in the near future, but in the meantime here’s some excellent writing from Sam Harris published in Newseek:

…You can learn something about a person by the company [Palin] keeps. In the churches where Palin has worshiped for decades, [...]

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Save the Constitution

I wish there was more I could do to support Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s recent motion to impeach our so-called President. I understand why Speaker Nancy Pelosi would rather not support any action to impeach. She’s dead wrong. Mr. Bush has violated so many laws (35 by Kucinich’s account) and broken our Constitution. Do we really [...]

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Losing our soul

Posted today on Defiant Majority:
And I ask myself today, what does the United States gain if it inherits the whole world but loses its soul? The soul that made this country a unique experiment — a beacon for the whole world to envy. Today, the United States my ancestors and I knew as a [...]

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International travel easier… kind of

For those who travel internationally, it looks like the U.S. is finally taking a few steps to improve the presently onerous experience of customs. According to the Customs and Border Patrol web, a new service is being launched that will ease U.S. entry for frequent travelers. The Global Entry Program allows registered users to pass [...]

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iPod index

Coevolving Innovations posted iPod Index, versus Big Mac Index a few months ago. While it’s fascinating to look at the calculated economics, there’s a slight flaw here. The iPod Index lists Brazil as the most expensive place to buy an iPod nano, but they’ve overlooked Iceland. Thanks to incredibly shocking import costs on all portable [...]

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Cell phones are bad

From 1983 to 1989, Dr. George Carlo, PhD, headed the telecommunication industry’s research into cell phone safety, with the ultimate goal of proving cell devices safe. The industry funded his project to the tune of $28 million dollars (U.S.) but his findings were so startling that he turned on his employers. Now involved with the non-profit Safe Wireless Dr. Carlo is telling the truth: Information-carrying microwave radiation, such as that used by cell phones, is harmful.

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Contextual interfaces

The debate regarding the effectiveness and wisdom of contextual user interface design has been getting more heated over the past decade. As program complexity expands and users developer greater technical savvy, contextual interfaces seem inevitable. But are they a good thing, or just a way to obfuscate already complicated systems?
Contextual interfaces are no easy thing [...]

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Opportunistic much…?

Maybe someone can explain why AscenderFonts is selling this Microsoft ClearType Font Collection for $299. Because, you see, anyone that buys a copy of Microsoft Office Home Edition 2008 is going to get them as part of the bundle… for $149. (Granted, Ascender’s package provides a five user license and Office Home only gives you [...]

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Twitterpated

This is why I don’t like Twitter or, for that matter, most of the social networking fads going on right now (I said most, not all).

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WordPress 2.5 and Gregarious

Updating to WordPress 2.5 went easily, except that my gregarious plugin stopped working. A shame, as I liked that one quite a bit and it appears the author doesn’t have time to maintain it.
Anyhow, for those of you that relied on gregarious to provide your digg links, here’s a quick fix: Edit your theme and [...]

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Secure OS/X Squirrelmail

I’m very disappointed with Apple at the moment. I expect careful, well-built systems from Apple. I expect things free video poker downloadpoker videofree online poker no download,free poker playing online,free online pokerfree texas holdem poker gamefree on line pokercrazy game of pokerfree online texas holdem poker,free holdem line poker texas,free texas holdem pokerfree internet pokerpoker [...]

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The case for global cooling

About a half degree anomaly over a one-year sample means nothing statistically. I’m interested in the 50- and 100- and 500-year trends. My own conclusions from studying them, be they right or wrong (I’ve no idea which, really): Global warming is happening. And, it probably has little or nothing to do with human activity. And, therefore, while we might be able to influence it doing so would be very, very hard…

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    This is me. Martial artist, zen student, programmer, writer and author, technologist, father of two, photographer and a resident of Los Angeles (well, the outskirts of it).

    I also publish Rational Scrum and am President & CEO of Hyrax International LLC, delivering comprehensive process improvements to its clientele. Specialities include audit and assessment of program areas such as project management, quality assurance, risk management and customer satisfaction as well as delivering focused initiatives to improve customer efficiency.

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