Shared Experience Or Spoiled Memory?

 Culture, Entertainment, Technology  No Responses »
Jan 142011
 

This video is great fun to watch, and I can only imagine how much fun it would’ve been to be at that wedding and experience it myself.

Imagine if wedding had occurred before Youtube. The guests would’ve been thrilled and then they’d've gone home. The stories would’ve spread as people tried it at their own weddings with their own special twists. Thousands of weddings and millions of friends and families may have experienced the fun and special memories of these special occasions.

As it is, there have been a few copy cats (including The Office) but each time you know that it is a copy, and you judge it against the original. They may have their own spark of creativity and deserve commendation but you would’ve judged them. They aren’t the original and they will all be judged for that, and the memories will be spoiled.

Not that progress, the internet, and Youtube aren’t wonderful, amazing, and worthwhile things, but I think we need to be careful how we allow Youtube and this eternally connected and sharing generation influence our lives and our experiences.

Don’t let Youtube spoil your memories.

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Merely Human: Science Vs. Religion

 Global Warming, Technology  No Responses »
Jul 132010
 

Elena Kagan in concert with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists fudges the facts regarding partial birth abortion to support her employer, then President Clinton.

Climatologists fear those with differing viewpoints so much they nudge numbers and massage facts, not substantially, but just enough, and very carefully control who gets access to their data.

A study finds children raised by adults living in homosexual relationships turn out OK, and then it turns out the study was run by a militant lesbian and contained unrepresentative samples that could not be construed in any way to represent a reasonable portrait of the general population.

I think it’s about time we set the 19th century idea of scientific infallibility to rest. It’s been dead a long time and the corpse is starting to stink.

Fourteen years ago, to protect President Clinton’s position on partial-birth abortions, Elena Kagan doctored a statement by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Conservatives think this should disqualify her from the Supreme Court. They understate the scandal. It isn’t Kagan we should worry about. It’s the whole judiciary.Kagan, who was then an associate White House counsel, was doing her job: advancing the president’s interests. The real culprit was ACOG, which adopted Kagan’s spin without acknowledgment. But the larger problem is the credence subsequently given to ACOG’s statement by courts, including the Supreme Court. Judges have put too much faith in statements from scientific organizations. This credulity must stop.

The problem with science is the problem with religion is the problem with corporations is the problem with the poor: we’re all merely human. We’re incapable of unbiased action or thought, no matter how carefully we try.

As conservative talk show host Michael Medved says, he admits he’s biased and is up front about it. No one can talk with him and not be aware of where he is coming from. And it is precisely this honesty, this up-frontness about his perspective that means you can learn the truth from him. It’s not that conservatives always tell the truth and liberals always don’t, it’s that when you know someone’s perspective and know they are not trying to obfuscate, you can see how their story fits into the bigger picture of Truth.

Compare the unabashedly conservative hosts on the Fox News channel. No one expects them not to be conservative (and even the liberals there trumpet the fact) and therefore, because there is no guise of infallibility or ruse of absolute even-handedness, they are the most watched news network, and the fastest growing too.

CNN pretends to be totally unbiased, and thus tip their hand. MSNBC proves everything.

I don’t care where you come from nearly as much as I care that you’re up front about it.

Being up front about your opinion shows that you respect others to be capable of informed decisions, and it shows you’re not so conceitedly ignorant you’ve convinced yourself you’re the only one right.

Science is made of human observation.The existence of biases in each and every human being means all observations and perceptions are biased as well. To deny the bias it to enhance the bias and the resulting skew in all your resulting data. You may be able to claim the scale cannot lie but you’re still going to interpret the data the way you want.

Science is not the holy pursuit of the epitome of truth, it is the headlong search for rationalization, for proving we’re not wrong.

The sooner we accept that science is just another human endeavor and therefore subject to all the faults and failures and stunning triumphs of all other human endeavors, the sooner we can get on with this crazy little thing called life.

Government Gets It Wrong. Again.

 Government, people, Technology  2 Responses »
Feb 012010
 

Evil phone attacking innocent but distracted motorist

A new study is out reporting that laws forbidding cell phone use, both texting and calling, while driving do not have a significant impact on the number of car accidents. Instead, it’s distractions, not just cell phones, that kill.

In the Wall Street Journal:

Laws that forbid motorists from using hand-held phones or texting while driving don’t appear to result in a significant decrease in vehicle crashes, according to a new study by the Highway Loss Data Institute expected to be released Friday.The study, expected to be released at a conference in Washington, D.C., Friday, comes amid stepped-up efforts by federal highway-safety regulators to ban texting while driving and curb other forms of driver distraction. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood earlier this week announced rules to forbid commercial truck and bus drivers from text messaging while driving. Mr. LaHood has said he would ban all texting while driving if he could.

But the government and do-gooders who live by restricting others will not give up so easily.

The Transportation Department won’t be troubled with little things like facts:

…it is irresponsible to suggest that laws banning cell phone use while driving have zero effect on the number of crashes on our nation’s roadways. A University of Utah study shows that using a cell phone while driving can be just as dangerous and deadly as driving drunk. We know that by enacting and enforcing tough laws, states have reduced the number of crashes leading to injuries and fatalities.

In that statement they claim one substantiated claim, that the University of Utah found cell phone driving is as bad as drunk driving, and one unsubstantiated claim phrased in such as way as to scoff at substantiation, “We know that by enacting and enforcing tough laws, states have reduced the number of crashes leading to injuries and fatalities.”

That’s pretty much the same as leading an argument with “everybody knows…”, appealing to common sense without factual basis.

The Highway Loss Data Institute, which sponsored this new study, is financed by the insurance industry. This will lend credence to the study as insurance companies need to mitigate risk in order to maximize profit, and this report claims there is much less risk than previously assumed.

The facts (WSJ):

The HLDI studied data on monthly collision claims in four states that banned the use of hand-held phones by motorists before and after the bans went into effect. The HLDI also compared collision data from states that enacted bans on driving while texting or phoning to accident claims in states that didn’t enact such bans.

In New York, HLDI said its researchers found that collision claims decreased compared to other states, but the decrease began before the state’s ban on hand-held phoning took effect.

The HLDI data don’t show whether drivers involved in accidents were using cellphones at the time. But the HLDI said in a statement “reductions in observed phone use following bans are so substantial and estimated effects of phone use on crash risk are so large that reductions in aggregate crashes would be expected.”

So what are we left with? Restrictions on the use of cell phones while driving which do not affect the number of accidents.

Sounds like and apology and lifting of the regulations is in order.

Likelihood of this occuring? Nil.

Story in CNET.

Story in the Wall Street Journal.

Epic Fail: Embryonic Stem Cell Research

 Abortion, California, Government, Health, Technology  4 Responses »
Jan 132010
 

Epic Fail: For some things, there's just no excuse

Investors Business Daily reports the institute created by California Proposition 71 to research medical applications of Embryonic Stem Cells has quietly begun shifting it’s research focus to Adult Stem Cells.

Quick rehash: Embryonic Stem Cells are the result of abortions, the designer baby process, in vitro fertilization, and other procedures of a morally ambiguous to morally evil nature. Adult Stem Cells are derived from adult human adipose (fat) and other sources all given voluntarily, usually by the very person who will be benefiting directly from the treatment.

Embryonic Stem Cell Research (ESCR) = Morally murky, usually objectionable.

Adult Stem Cell Research (ASCR) = Morally good.

Now back to the story.

Five years later, ESCR has failed to deliver and backers of Prop 71 are admitting failure. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state agency created to, as some have put it, restore science to its rightful place, is diverting funds from ESCR to research that has produced actual therapies and treatments: adult stem cell research. It not only has treated real people with real results; it also does not come with the moral baggage ESCR does.

To us, this is a classic bait-and-switch, an attempt to snatch success from the jaws of failure and take credit for discoveries and advances achieved by research Prop. 71 supporters once cavalierly dismissed. We have noted how over the years that when funding was needed, the phrase “embryonic stem cells” was used. When actual progress was discussed, the word “embryonic” was dropped because ESCR never got out of the lab.

Alan Trounson, stem cell pioneer in Australia and director of the California institute says “If we went 10 years and had no clinical treatments, it would be a failure.”

In other words, as I’ve mentioned here before, Embryonic Stem Cell Research fails. Epicly. Again.

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Failure Of Diplomacy

 Iran, Technology, War  No Responses »
Dec 082009
 
Iranian nuclear power plant southwest of Tehran

Iranian nuclear power plant southwest of Tehran

“In the last year, two things have happened,” he told the FADC. “Iran has advanced its military nuclear program, and the international community has lost its legitimacy.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commenting on reports that Iran is now capable of building nuclear weapons and delivering them as warheads to Israel.

I’d add one more thing that has happened in the last year, we’ve lost a President with backbone and nerve and a strong sense of leadership and gained one who believes in diplomacy above all.

Diplomacy is good and an excellent first choice, but the entire world is now held ransom by the tin-hat despots and megalomaniacal extreme religious leadership of Iran because we didn’t bring our big stick to the table.

The Internet And The Death Of FUD

 Free Market, Technology  1 Response »
Dec 072009
 
The Internet circa 2003

The Internet circa 2003

Latest in our series on the beneficent free market is this wee screed on the internet.

The internet is a good thing. A powerful thing, I think everybody can agree with that. But I would argue it is a good thing too.

I don’t gloss over the terrible things people can find on the internet, the addictions it foments and feeds, the filth it spreads or the lies and slander that so easily pass for worthwhile information on it’s myriad nooks and crannies.

As with anything truly powerful, those who use it best seem to be those who would misuse it and abuse other with it.

But for all the garbage you can so easily stumble upon, there is great good. The potential and realized good both far outweigh the potential and realized evil in the same way the slightest candle will chase and overpower the shadows of the darkest room.

The internet is good because the internet allows information.

This would seem like a tenuous argument at best, but let’s not leave the argument there.

The internet is good because the internet allows information of all types, from all sources, to all consumers.

As Lady Justice holds her scales blindly and impartially, the internet is oblivious to any contextualizing of either the informer or the informed. The information itself can be contextualized, and due to the sheer mass of information on the internet, any single bit can be matched with any other bits to provide context and deeper insight into any piece of information.

But the internet itself does not care. It’s greatest strength is also it’s greatest weakness. The internet does not care what or who or how or why or anything else regarding the information that is posted and shared and disseminated through it’s labyrinthine pipes.

Fear is always the result of misinformation or too little information. From the macro fears of life “does God care for my future?” to the micro fears, “spiders!!!!!”, information is the best and most effective form of fear slaying. Reading the bible (maybe even on the internet) we can read God’s promises regarding our lives, and then looking back through our own lives and seeing the providential Hand working through the good times and the bad, that fear can be slayed by information. Using other information we can determine whether or not a given spider is dangerous to humans.

Thus the greatest enemy of fear is information, real and true information.

Now the obvious argument is that lies and disinformation are so very common on the internet, often masquerading as truth very effectively.

However, the internet also addresses that issue by nature, once again, of it’s open information structure.

Prior to instant background checks and credit reports and the globalized economies, trust was a necessary part of a business relationship. Today we still have trust-based systems for those times when a resume just isn’t enough.

References, people who know something and are in positions of trust and recognition, are often called upon to verify the abilities and character of a person. When one is unsure of whether or not someone else can or should be trusted they confer with a third party who has legitimate reason to be trusted and thereby determine the trustworthiness of the person.

With the internet, in it’s connected and interconnected state, we can easily find legitimately trustworthy people and then infer, from those they trust, other trustworthy sources. It is all about the free exchange of ideas and information.

Further, the antagonism that naturally results in such a free-for-all atmosphere further bolsters legitimate reputations as negative information can only with the greatest of difficulty be quashed or controlled, and more often than not, will free itself regardless the efforts of those seeking to control it. Those legitimately trustworthy will weather and withstand the onslaught and thereby gain further credibility.

The internet is the death of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) in that it enabled anybody to speak the truth, share the truth, and find the truth,and be sure it is the truth easily, and with high levels of certainty. It is the greatest leveler of the masses.

The internet could not exist were it not for the freest society in the world pushing and encouraging and growing it beyond the wildest dreams of those researchers at DARPA so many years ago.

Hey, it even allows me, a 20-something nobody to publish my pointless and babbling rants in a public forum with equal opportunity for success as authors of the first degree and highest reputation.

Obama Can Innovate

 economy, Free Market, Global Warming, Government, Media, News, Technology  1 Response »
May 192009
 

The fawning over Obama has not yet ceased in the mainstream media.

BBC headlines a story this morning with the appallingly thoughtless “Obama to curb vehicle emissions“.

First off, grammar police here to say: didn’t your mother tell you that every word in a headline or title is capitalized?

Now, to address the fallacy here: The President is not tasked with invention, nor with development. His expect forte is not to spearhead industrial progress, nor is his path laid alongside that of Carver, Watt, or Fermi.

The purpose of the President is to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. And nowhere within that auspicious document, envied and imitated by many and equaled by none yet, does it state the role of the Government of the United States or the President thereof have either the responsibility, prerogative, or power to direct industrial invention.

The Times of London leads with the much less misleading but no less grammatically faulty  “Obama to introduce emissions curbs on gas guzzlers“.

It is true I parts of me would prefer the no less true but much more provocative headline “Obama Corks US Industry, Innovation”.

The BBC article begins by quoting the talking points of the White House Press Release:

The plan will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil by 2016 and be the equivalent of taking 177 million cars off the road, White House officials said.

Words sure to bring warm fuzzies to everybody with fuzz between their ears, for sure.

I’m completely for innovation making things more efficient and development making things more clean.

I’m all for using the incredible wealth and depth of technology to preserve the environment. I love clean air, camping, tree climbing, fishing, and all the good things tha come with living in a clean place.

But arbitrary requirements which have only shown in history to destroy and hobble and prevent and impoverish have no place here.

A dirty little secret about gas mileage and lower emissions is that, with current technology, there is a bit of a trade off.

My current car qualifies in the state of California as PZEV: Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle. It is a small SUV, crossover-type from Mitsubishi. It is in the same emissions category as the Hybrid Toyota Camry. But it would fail Obama’s new “standards”. I only get 20-25MPG. Good for this car, but much less than the 35MPG proscribed by our Inventor In Chief.

One thing consistently noted in the reviews of this vehicle was that Mitsubishi decided to go with lower fuel economy to achieve the lower emissions.

On it’s face this trade-off doesn’t make much sense: burning less gas should mean less emissions, right?

But when you take into account all the various factors that affect emissions, compression in the engine, efficiency of the catalytic converter, richness of gas mixture, you will find that the cleanest burning calibration of the various elements is not the most energy efficient.

And, according to the Times of London article, these regulations and constraints will cost us more:

New vehicles at present average 25mpg, with most cars required to reach 27.5mpg and light trucks 23.1mpg. New Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) rules passed by Congress are already expected to add an extra $700 to the price of a new vehicle, and today’s announcement will add about another $600.

So in this economically difficult time the Savior of the Earth is costing each family who needs a car an extra 5-10% of the normal cost. So those claims about how these changes will make it as though there are 177 million cars aren’t lying, except for the “as though” bit.

It won’t be an “as though”, it will be fewer cars. It will be reality.

Technical Stuff

 I Pandora, Technology  2 Responses »
Apr 012009
 

I’ve been playing around with technical stuff on the site lately.

IntenseDebate was good as far as comment management goes, but there were some comments that seemed to slip through the cracks, and the RSS feed started showing REALLY old comments.

A few people had mentioned Disqus, so I switched yesterday.

It has been a pain. Poorly done, a lot of tedious cut and paste and copy and edit stuff I didn’t have to do in IntenseDebate, And their help is hard to find. so I’ll be switching back shortly.

And then Windows Live Writer.

I’m writing this post on Windows Live Writer.

First impressions: it’s ambitious. Very ambitions.

A familiar but simplified interface that allows easy posting to a blog of multiple forms of content.

And they even try making the edit window look like your blog live, which is a cool feature. Except it didn’t work.

I need to piece through my blog theme code to see why, but the white background which takes a little longer than the rest of the page to load only shows up as a white bar across the top of the Writer window, and I’m stuck writing all this content on a dark grey background.

Not an optimal situation, to be sure.

But, if I had a white background or otherwise more compatible theme, it would be a pretty cool setup.

Now to see how well it posts this to the actual site…

UPDATE: It worked pretty well. I must say. Impressive Microsoft. Now if only you could make a web browser that’s actually worthwhile…

UPDATE: Sorry Ben, Arne, and KOR, your comments were lost in the inability of Disqus to manage an export and a 500 error or two caused by my hosts limitations (hear that 1and1?). Feel free to add the comments again…

UPDATE: Found your comments. Everything should be up to date, and I found the latest comment widget and it works better than the RSS.

Technically It’s Stupid

 Free Market, Government, Technology  No Responses »
Dec 292008
 

Technology news seems to be a bit interesting today.

If technology is the latest and greatest proof of the evolution of man, it only serves to prove that nothing really is new under the sun.

Man acts in an irrational and selfish manner against the fact and tide of all that is known and proven.

First up, texting.

Think it’s cheap? You have no idea HOW cheap. And how much the standard carriers want you to keep thinking it’s only so cheap.

The New York Times published a story showing just how cheap those text messages really are for the big 4 versus just how much they convince you is cheap.

I’m not for legislating our way out of this, government will only jump in and muck up the system. But I’m very much in favor of putting pressure on the companies to get them to charge more competitive rates for texting.

This article is also scary in that it is yet another “real problem, fake solution” kind of piece which is born from and feeds the very Big Brother mentality of government. So long as government is called in to fix every problem, the solutions will be market takeovers and the socialization of companies.

Remember the Amazon “1-click” patent? Apparently the patent office didn’t learn its lesson and has continued allowing senseless and pointless ‘process’ patents which seek to limit legitimate and normal ways of accomplishing things rather than protecting truly original design and innovation.

Apple has patented its ‘swipe’ gestures used on it’s touch screen systems such as the iPhone. HP has integrated similar gestures on its touchscreen laptops and computers for nearly a year now and will likely face significant penalties and/or litigation from Apple to discontinue its use on their home media center systems.

And a small company nobody has heard of before today decided to use a patent they received regarding file previews to sue Google, Apple, and Microsoft. Sounds like their CEO idolizes SCO.

File previews are used by most mainstream internet browsers, Windows OS, Apple OS, Linux, Google Documents, and a host of modern user interfaces.

The previews usually display a small part of the contents of the file or files selected in order to aid selecting the correct file.

Their use is no great innovation and are accomplished so many ways there is no way to justly and honestly state that one person can patent and control the entire process.

And so mankind marches on blissfully secure in his own evolutionary progress and yet proving, over and over, he is no better nor worse than he ever has been. All other claims are fantasy and falacy, together.

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