The Dalai Lama endorses extroverted pessimism, and I have his tweet to prove it.
DalaiLama: If we change inside and disarm ourselves by dealing constructively with negative thoughts and emotions, we can literally change the world.
Can the man make it any clearer? When your glass is half empty, find another half-empty glass to fill the first one back up with. I shall change the world!
Have you ever done something and thought, “There’s gotta be a better way to do this,” or decided to remake something to work better?
I do this constantly; ask anyone who’s seen my computer desk. I have my high speed modem and separate router (with WiFi) mounted vertically on the side (for easy access without taking up desk space) along with a dedicated analog telephone that runs off the phone line (no batteries or plug ins.) The underside of the desk has a protected screen over the power center (my cat loves chewing wires when you aren’t paying her proper attention) with a UPS/surge suppressor and “power off” outlets that secure against phantom power feeds when the computer is off. The desk hutch lights are all low-power super-bright LED and also power down with the computer.
I’m also all for gradual change to improve things, like moving away from leaded gasoline, replacing paper bags with plastic, or using green technologies, but only when it makes sense to do so. Have you heard how loud wind farm windmills roar to make electricity (60-70 decibels?) Have you priced how many solar panels it would cost to run your home or business (285 square feet for 600 MW a day?) As technology improves to become more efficient, green technologies will also improve until it makes sense replace old technology. If you can get your 600 MW of power consumption down to 100, you’d only need 1/6 as many solar panels, or just 48 square feet.
If world leaders mandate that the world must stop using oil by 2015, maybe that will happen and maybe it won’t, but making it a crime to use oil thereafter even if the problem hasn’t been solved is just foolish. Need a better commercial space orbiter? A car that drives itself to a destination while avoiding obstacles? Fifty miles per gallon? DARPA and the X Prize Foundation has had the better answer for years: offer a prize to create the competition for solving a technological problem. This is why free market business competition works.
So, if you’re done inside a room, turn off the light as you leave. If you can replace an appliance with a more efficient one that can do more with less, buy it and properly dispose of the old one (or better yet, recycle it.) I cannot wait for my own electric car that goes a thousand miles on a single fuel cell that plants wildflowers as it roars down the highway at 120 mph steering with only the power of my mind, but please don’t ask me to park my car in a land fill and walk around in the dark eating tree bark just because the future hasn’t been invented yet.
And speaking of the future, where are my cheap, solid-state, everlasting LED replacement light bulbs so we can quit making these florescent bulbs that need a Level 5 HAZMAT team to properly dispose of?
There’s been a lot of political talk as of late: who believes what, who wants what, and who’s doing what to whom. I’ve had some college, traveled the world on the US Navy’s dime, and have made my name in the work force through the development of the Internet. I believe my point of view in both US and world politics is as important as anyone else, and also I feel that something is very wrong. Here’s why:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Every American should know this, the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence. Everyone should be allowed to live; everyone should be free. And to me, “the pursuit of Happiness” implies that the United States government in no way should prevent any citizen from reaching to better themselves. I also feel it does not, however, imply that everyone should get the same as what everyone else has, that there is a minimum requirement.
Write a book, start a company, fulfill a need, earn a profit, and buy stuff. What’s more American than that? But there seems to be a movement to demonize “the American Dream” (own your house and retire debt free to live out your life as you wish.) How dare you succeed where I fail? Because there is no “fairness” clause in the declaration, only the right to pursue a better share. Failure is knowledge; try again or try something else.
I believe in a strong military to protect these rights. Failure to show the strength to protect something is an invitation to having it taken from you; ask any bully on the playground where he got all that lunch money from. As a world superpower, the fact that America is not bent on conquering the globe (as the British Empire once did) should speak volumes, although we probably should police the world only when called in or directly threatened.
On a side note, guess what the first thing to go is when you cut military spending? Soldiers raises and their families benefits. If there are less bombs and bullets, that means military families are already suffering. I’ve worked military supply; I’ve seen how this works.
In polls, I’ve read that other countries declare that America is the country they hate the most, but it is also the country they wish they could have been born in. It seems intuitive that others want what Americans already have, and it is now becoming evident that it can be lost at the stroke of a pen fair easier than at gunpoint.
Whether you believe in the invisible creator in the sky or not, the idea of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness is worth fighting for. I wasn’t an economics major, but I know the difference between an income and an expense. A call center (providing customer support) is always an expense because it produces no income, just like a government. It needs to be as small and efficient as possible to do its job cost effectively, allowing more revenue to be freed for expansion and sales.
Some things being done and suggested right now in the name of “boosting” the economy won’t work, and it’s simple to see why at this level. Taxing only the most successful companies actually taxes EVERYONE… because any price increase or tax obligation will be passed on to the consumer. If a company can’t afford to raise the price and meet a government imposed obligation, they can go out of business and take all of those jobs with them. To boost the economy, lock in the current tax base so smart companies and entrepreneurs can make actual business plans today that will still work tomorrow.
But what about everyone who CAN’T strive for more, that CAN’T better themselves? When others needs help, charity is when you have extra and CHOOSE to help those less fortunate. Sadly, there are people who think YOU should help whether you want to or can afford to. When the government decides to take your money only to give it to others who don’t produce anything, its called tyranny (even for a very admirable cause) and people have died all over the world to stop it, even declaring their independence from such a government… and that’s where we came in, folks.
Please discuss.
“There is a great disturbance in the Jacksonville Alternative radio scene… like a hundred thousand listeners cried out at once before their radio station was silenced.”
All kidding aside, I was one of the first people I know of in Jacksonville, Florida who noticed when X102.9 went on the air and who they were targeting. Later I documented how far they’d gotten when ratings were posted, but the competition (since there’s no college radio around these parts to speak of.)
But as of this morning, the once mighty Planet Radio had become “magic” something-or-another, a ho-hum light station. The morning show X made fun of, Lex & Terry, won’t be allowed back on Jax airwaves until October 1st due to contractual obligations. The question is, with X102.9 not only the dominating alt radio in the area, will it continue to get better or start to coast the way Planet Radio did… into oblivion?
I talked to a person today who asked me how they could charge to add friends or fans to their Facebook page. This would be a recurring monthly fee, also, so failure to pay means being unfriended. As this person claimed to be a health and beauty expert, anything they discussed on their page was obviously valuable and anyone who wanted in on the conversation and information would have to pay for it.
I needed a good laugh today and wish them much luck that the money will start rolling in. Yeah… any minute now.
According to an article on Wired.com, collecting the information that allows a filter to compare an image, a book, a song, or a video to existing material is itself an uncompensated use of the material it is meant to single out for violation. In other words, even “fair use” isn’t enough of a reason for website to police themselves prior to actual notification by a copyright holder since the website would have to have legal copies (aka paid for) of everything being filter to compare it to.
If this holds up, no website can currently be held responsible to filter its own bandwidth for violations because they would have to purchase and own a copy of whatever is being searched for (read: everything and anything) to check and see if it’s real. Ha!
I just realized that I haven’t updated my so-called “personal” blog in a while.
Lessee… I finagled from work a five-day vacation, four of which will be in Orlando, Florida with my girlfriend and as a convention guest. I lost another two pounds but seem to be holding steady; it may be time to step up the exercise portion of the program. Nothing really nutty going on at work, plus I reached a stopping place for the spelljammer campaign I was running. I even managed to find a real wooden chair for my home office, one of those old teacher’s desk chairs that would probably survive a trash truck being dropped on it, and paid only $10 for it. And “The Reaper” has started doing videos again over at MovieCrypt.com.
Overall, not too shabby. Happy Memorial Day, ever’body!
There’s many ways a film can make money. Box office receipts, DVDs, rentals, and first broadcast rights. But the most immediate thing fans of a film can do to support it (in addition to telling their friends to go see it) is to buy up a little merchandise. T-shirts, action figures, the novel version, whatever. But why are there some franchises who insist on providing things nobody wants or has to settle for?
Case and point: How to Train your Dragon. Fun flick, neat characters, and, of course, dragons. The dragon everyone wants seems to be Toothless, a “night fury” who’s disappears against the darkness of a night sky and breaths fire bolts like air-to-air missiles. His head is flat with bright green eyes, resembling (and acting like) a giant winged black cat.
So why is EVERY plush animal at the toy store blue? Or purple? Only the teeny, tiny figurines seems to have access to actual black dye, because the makers of anything bigger than that currently in stores looks nothing like what’s on screen. Is blue supposed to be family friendlier or something? Was there a surplus of blue fur and felt after Lilo and Stitch stopped making cartoons?
To paraphrase Stephen King: “Give was what we want and we’ll go away.”
Have you heard of the Bloom Box? How about the Oorja fuel cell? While so-called green technologies such as solar, wind, and wave power are still noisy, expensive, and inefficient compared to even the worst fossil fuels, simplified energy conversion systems that squeeze out cheap energy with amazing efficiency are starting to pop up, and the idea that a fuel-celled electric car is sounding less like hype and sooner than later.
Imagine a 5-kilowatt cell that takes up half the space of the battery packs in a Toyota Prius. Instead of a plug-in vehicle, you’d have one similar to your gas-powered grill. Pull into a station, disconnect your spent cell, buy a new one (and get your deposit for the old container applied), hook it up and off you go for another 1000 miles or more. Not too shabby, and no need to worry about forgetting to plug in your car before going to bed.
For those who don’t know, two of the biggest tourist attractions in New Orleans were never under water: the French Quarter and the Garden District. Everything on the east side, specifically Slidell, was what was hit (and is still mostly abandoned).
But the “Big Easy” is open for business and wants everyone to know it. Whether you’re into ghost and vampire tours, old architecture, cemetery tours, or just enjoy several different parties nightly from bar to bar, New Orleans is filling up with people again (and is a bargain right now.)
Stay in a haunted hotel, peruse the voodoo shops, and drink your fill even in the streets (as long as your poison isn’t in a glass container.) Here’s a few snapshots from our recent long weekend: New Orleans French Quarter And Tours.
Kevin A. Ranson 