April 2009
Monthly Archive
Smackdown II
| Posted by Chill on 30 Apr 2009 |
People who are against software customizability piss me the fuck off.
But I lay the smack down on him pretty good, so I was happy about that.
I really don’t understand this latent developer need to remove features that most people like, and to tell me that I am not using my software the “right” way. We should reserve waterboarding for those tardbiscuits only.
Not getting acquainted
| Posted by Chill on 30 Apr 2009 |
I’d never thought about it this way before, but this describes well why I don’t use things like Facebook and Twitter.
I still don’t think I detect it very well, which is why I was so interested that one of my girlfriends cannot stand Facebook for that exact reason. It was nearly immediately aversive to her. She can barely stand to see people only showing the flattering pictures of the families doing quirky unique things. She looked at the fantastic parties and witty updates and she was DONE with Facebook. She doesn’t believe what she sees, so she wants no part of it.
Also, there is the fact that I want to know people deeply or not at all. I don’t want acquaintances. The world is becoming more acquaintance-only, and that has nothing to do with me.
Sex
| Posted by Chill on 29 Apr 2009 |
This is a pretty unformed thought, but it’s something I’ve noticed lately — I think it’s a pretty dangerous idea that sex itself is offensive to women.
That seems to be the cultural consensus of late, and I don’t think that helps women or men, or the culture.
Inspired by this thread. (And no, I don’t think the presentation was a good idea.)
It was to laugh
| Posted by Chill on 29 Apr 2009 |
Killer Chick
| Posted by Chill on 29 Apr 2009 |
I know this is an old story, and I’ve probably linked to it before on my old blogs, but I just wanted to throw out there that you don’t have to watch Battlesar Galactica to find women as competent as Starbuck.
Here’s another piece about Kim Campbell, aka “Killer Chick”.
Another Battlestar Galactic comparison. Like the Vipers and the Galactica itself on the show, the A-10′s operations are all manual (no fly-by-wire here). This wasn’t to make sure that Cylons didn’t hack the systems, but to increase survivability and resiliency.
The A-10 is exceptionally hardy. Its strong airframe can survive direct hits from armor-piercing and high-explosive projectiles up to 23 mm. The aircraft has triple redundancy in its flight systems, with mechanical systems to back up double-redundant hydraulic systems. This permits pilots to fly and land when hydraulic power or part of a wing is lost. Flight without hydraulic power uses the manual reversion flight control system; this engages automatically for pitch and yaw control, and under pilot control (manual reversion switch) for roll control. In manual reversion mode, the A-10 is sufficiently controllable under favorable conditions to return to base and land, though control forces are much higher than normal. The aircraft is designed to fly with one engine, one tail, one elevator and half a wing torn off.
The A-10 — my favorite military aircraft of all time — was, in other words, designed for a world when everything had gone to shit. Its original role was to kill Soviet tanks in a land war in Europe.
Go read the entire Wikipedia article. No matter what you think of the folly of war, the A-10 is an engineering marvel, and the pilots who fly it are some interesting people.
Hahvahd
| Posted by Chill on 28 Apr 2009 |
The universities in this case are merely responding to pressure from the corporate market for university grads.
Of course they are going to be more like vocational schools rather than centers of empyrean knowledge. Most corporate jobs allow for zero training time. You have to know what you are doing the minute you step in the door to even have a chance. Back in the old days, it was expected that you’d learn on the job. That is going the way of the Megalondon.
Now, you walk into a job, they expect you to have five years of experience in something that’s only been out for two years.
The “efficiency” of capitalism is demanding these changes, not the schools.
French fleecing
| Posted by Chill on 28 Apr 2009 |
If you want to waste a lot of money, I have the restaurant for you.
Looking at those dishes, I could make all of those things for about $15 and an hour or so.
Concerto in tard minor
| Posted by Chill on 27 Apr 2009 |
I’ve seen the exact thing Amanda is talking about here at concerts with a female frontwoman, and I have a hard time explaining it as well.
I mean these guys chose to come to the show, presumably because they like the artist in question.
I do think a large part of it is that these guys do feel threatened by women who are demonstrably better than them — more talented, more famous and who probably make more money.
For reasons I do not and never have understood, this frightens many (most?) men quite a bit.
I think one of the reasons that Tanya Donelley came over to our (and only our) little section during the Belly concert was because my friend and I were obviously enraptured, while the rest of the audience was either indifferent or actively hostile.
That concert was where I fully realized that I just hated most everyone.
Sleep Dealer
| Posted by Chill on 26 Apr 2009 |
This movie looks excellent, and I will be seeing it as soon as I can find it.
Why I don’t trust most expertise
| Posted by Chill on 26 Apr 2009 |
I was going to write this logorrheic post about why I don’t, as I’ve been told I should, trust experts very much.
But no need. Simply look at the financial crisis happening around us — that most experts insisted wouldn’t, couldn’t happen — to know why experts should be distrusted as much as anyone else spouting off random opinions.
The harder the science, the more I trust the expert. But if there is even a hint of self-interest, I pretty much throw out their advice in toto.
History shows this, for smart people, to be the correct approach most of the time. Sure, you won’t win every one, but you never do.
Update: Barry says what I’m thinking better than I did.
The smartest idiots you’ve ever met
| Posted by Chill on 25 Apr 2009 |
It’s amazing how many smart people are fundamentally, ridiculously dumb. And gullible, too.
Yep, we really have no hope, do we?
The same
| Posted by Chill on 25 Apr 2009 |
This piece articulates well why I did not like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and is also a good examination of Dollhouse.
I have not yet watched Dollhouse, but I suspect that I will like it, though probably not as much as Firefly, my favorite TV show of all time (though I do not, as is often the case with me, think it’s the best TV show of all time).
Not an Au future
| Posted by Chill on 25 Apr 2009 |
Excellent article about climate change in Australia.
It’s striking, though not really surprising, that so many of the farmers in the article blame environmentalists for their woes. In human affairs, invariably the messenger is blamed.
If they’d listened to the environmentalists 30 years ago, of course, they would not be in such dire straits now.
Just goes to show that extreme population reduction is the only thing that has a hope of solving any of these problems. There are too many of us, and not enough planet. Even with a falling population (whenever and if that projection occurs), it would not ever be falling nearly quickly enough to assuage the damage we are doing to the ecosystems that sustain us.
But if those ecosystems die, so do we — so the population problem will be taken care of either way, in a sense.
VM in the AM
| Posted by Chill on 25 Apr 2009 |
Putting on my robe and wizard hat, several years ago I asserted that virtualization in the future would be the way you do OSes — as in, almost all presentation would be a VM of some sort.