Monthly archive for June2014 - page 3

The CA State Senate considers a weighty issue:  The issue of tiny little fragile baby children lugging monstrously heavy textbooks to and from school in back packs loaded down with not only their books, but laptops, video games, soft drinks, bottled water, high fructose corn syrup, various genetically modified things, single-use plastic grocery bags and e-cigs.  A senate staffer who asked to remain anonymous stated that Senators are looking into this “because of the potential health risks posed to children by performing actual physical exercise”.

The issue has been gaining momentum since ten years ago when the State School Board adopted weight standards for textbooks.  It is common knowledge that textbooks have gotten heavier over the years;  Schoolkids of earlier generations, say from the dawn of time until the California Legislature achieved permanent Democratic Majorities suffered no ill effects form carrying their books – in the 1960’s for example it was common to see children walking to and from school balancing  ten or twelve textbooks stacked on top of their heads.  Backpacks were unheard of.  Textbooks of the day were lighter, most likely due to the high levels of extremely radioactive waste products used in their maufacture, a practice which was halted by Democratic administrations who cared more about the children than their own parents did.  But the trade off is that now books are heavy.  And the delicate flower children of today can’t be asked to do anything that may cause them to crack a sweat or harm their self esteem – and toting a heavy backpack makes a child feel weak.  A child who feels weak feels bad, and gone are the days when you could give em a twinkie and a pat on the butt to make them feel better, because it is illegal.  Yes, both of those things are illegal.

While the textbook weight standards are a logical first step, I suggest that in the ten years of their existence we have only seen the problem get worse in the perception of caring State Senators and the Chiroporactic lobbying groups that sponsor related legislation.  I am calling for bold action and an end to limp wristed half measures.  I am calling on the Senate to establish a commision to to compile a report on the feasability of establishing a study on creating a warning label for textbooks, backpacks and…hell, just put it on everything next to the Prop 65 warning:

Remember…it’s not stupid If It’s For The Children!

I would like to wish a Happy Father’s Day to my dad and all dads everywhere, past and present.  Future dads will get theirs when they become fathers!  Have a great day, dads!

-CA screws everyone with carbon tax – wastes the money on bullet train

There is no crisis so grave that it cannot be solved with higher taxes.  Or, in this case carbon offset fees.  You see, global warming is so serious that we have come up with a scheme whereby industries that generate carbon emissions (industries that coincidentally drive our economy) will need to buy “offsets” to allow them to continue their carbon emissions.  It’s a win-win!  They get to pay to stay in business and the State gets a $1 billion payday!  And you get to pay higher prices for electricity, gasoline and probabaly damn near everything you buy.

I think the mafia used to have a program like that: “youse gets to pay us and then youse don’t get your legs broke.  Everybody wins.”  Then the government arrested, prosecuted and jailed the gangsters.  This is known as “eliminating the competition”.

The halls of the Capitol must be positively awash in the saliva of drooling legislators and lobbyists anticipating the new funding that awaits their pet projects.  There’s money a-waitin’ to be spent!  This week it was reported that as part of the budget agreement, California’s High Speed Rail would receive 25% of anticipated cap-and-trade revenue.  Anticipated cap and trade revenue.  We’re going to spend anticipated money on an imaginary train.  We could just replace the state goverment with a Sim City game.  Jerry Brown’s not gonna stand for this foolishness, right?  He’s fiscal hawk!  He wants a rainy day fund!  Oh wait…the crazy train is Jerry Brown’s pet.  He wanted 33% of the cap-and-trade “windfall” to go to the Fresno to Lodi express.  Oh, snap – no adult in the room on this one.

$250 Million probably won’t pay for the paper clips when this boondoggle gets underway.  This is like saying we need to spend $20 Billion to dig a giant hole to throw money in.  But the good news is we get to keep throwing money into it…forever!  And create hundreds of jobs!  Because – transportation!  Trains are the future!

Back in the 70’s when Richard Nixon (R) nearly caused the universe to end by awkwardly covering up some political dirty tricks in the Watergate scandal, there was an episode where it was found that some taped recordings of Oval Office conversations between Nixon and some of the Watergate players contained an 18 minute blank spot.  Anyone familiar with 1970s technology of tape recording could conceive of a legitimate error possibly causing the blank, but foul play was immediately assumed.   This conclusion was most likely correct, and Congress and the public cut Nixon no slack at all.  When threatened with impeachment, Nixon resigned.

Today we learn that as the Congressional inquiry into possible collusion between the White House and the IRS to intimidate, harrass and persecute (and prosecute, for that matter) Republican and Conservative opposition groups, the IRS claims to have lost 2 years worth of e-mails between Lois Lerner and any groups outside of the IRS, such as the White House and Democrat Members of Congress.  But, hey, no big deal.  Accidents happen!  I mean, what big companies and organizations ever take precautions against things like this?  Certainly not the IRS!  Besides – we can trust Barack Obama (D).  See the (D)?  OK then.

Nothing to see here…Move along

You don’t argue with an Aardvark

While I was compiling the previous Goodbye Yellow Brick Road post, I came across the following song from the Tumbleweed Connection album and I had to share it as it is one of my all-time favorite songs.  Enjoy:

My goal with this week’s Music Friday – Yellow Brick Road Edition was to find an artist who is virtually a household name and perhaps introduce you to a few of his more obscure songs from my formative years, which are?  Anyone?   Bueller?  That’s right, the 70’s!  And by way of maintaining the connection to progressive or alt rock, I can tell you that Elton John, while he was still known by his real name Reginald Dwight, once auditioned for lead singer of King Crimson.  And you can’t get any more prog or alt than King Crimson.  Obviously, he did not pass the audition.  Though he teamed up with lyricist Bernie Taupin in the 60’s and his debut album Empty Sky was released in 1969, it was his 1970 album Elton John that established his style and contained his first US Top 100 single, Your Song.  Anyhoo... back to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.  The double album was released in early 1973 to instant critical acclaim, and yielded the hits Bennie and the Jets, Candle In The Wind as well as the title track, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.  If you click on those titles, the link will take you to YouTube where you can listen to those songs.  For my purposes today, I will feature three  songs you may not be familiar with if you haven’t listened to the album tens of thousands of times like I have.  You think I’m exaggerating…

First up:  Harmony (not hominy as someone suggested in the YouTube comments)

Next up:  This Song Has No Title.  Actually is does have a title – that is the title.

Finally we’ll ride off into the sunset with Roy Rogers

Elton John and Bernie Taupin collaborated on something like 30 albums, and they did not work together.  Taupin would write a set of lyrics and then send them, usually through the mail, to John wherever he was.  John would then put the lyrics to music.  Well.. whatever works.  And this works!

…and let slip the dogs of war!

…Wearable Technology!  When I wrote a few days ago about the evolution of wearable technology, I wondered whether a particular need inspired the technology or if  it was the rise of the technology that manifested the need.  And now I have learned of another use for wearable technology: life-logging.

I have never heard of life-logging, and the fact that I am only now learning about it is a bit of a surprise to me.  Though I’m no techie, I don’t live in a cave either.   Maybe I’m in denial about my cave dwelling.  No matter.  But when I read Rachel Metz’s review of 2 life-logging devices in the MIT Technology Review, I learned that certain “data fanatics and academics” have been life-logging since as early as 1994.  

This post isn’t so much about the performance or practicality of the devices – basically small wearable cameras.  If you want that information I suggest you read Ms. Metz’s review here.  This is more about the actual activity of life-logging;  As in what is it and why do it?  Fortunately for me, Ms. Metz provides the needed background in her review.    Life logging is precisely what it sounds like:  logging chronologically, in real time, the events which you area a party to that make up your life, and compiling or cataloging the information into an archive. To achieve this, one wears a device clipped to the clothing or around one’s neck that continually records images.  Not a video recording, but still shots taken at intervals (like the old school security cameras), I suppose because bandwith and storage isn’t (yet) free so some conservation of data is required.   The author reviews two such devices, the Autographer and the  Narrative.

That takes care of the “how”, now on to the “why?”  In 1998 one of the early adopters, Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell, started to collect as much digital information about his life as he could.  His goal?  To create a searchable archive of his memories.  If you think about it, people have been creating archives of their memories to some extent for a long time already.  How many have kept diaries?  Or compiled photos of special events into albums – albums which are now replaced by digital photo archives both online and off.  Camera phones have become ubiquitous and are now readily at hand to record any daily events whether momentous or mundane.  The progression seems logical – from once daily written records, to photographic records of special occasions, to photographic records of many daily events to life-logging: photographic records of all life’s events – compiled into a searchable archive.  So we don’t forget.

To me, this describes the process of creating a substitute memory – one that doesn’t forget or distort the way our organic memories do.  This is a clinical recording of the data that makes up an individual’s life experiences (assuming narration or dialog could be added).  One that will survive once our organic beings cease to exist.  And it could readily be imagined that in some future time the use of this technology might become as common as smartphone use has become today and that more and more people will compile such archives.  Could or would these archives then be compiled into a super archive – the collected memories of humanity?  And if so would that be a good thing?

What effects might this have on us a human beings?  Do we even understand what our memories mean to us?  It is a fact that our memories of events change over time – some traumantic events we forget altogether.  Is there a purpose to this we don’t understand that may be sidestepped by life-logging?  I am on the record as being skeptical of new technology, though history has also shown that I eventually adopt and conform.  History has also shown that technology often evolves from our servant to become our master; and that if technology can be abused, it will be abused.  

So as technology evolves, so do humans evolve.  We adapt to new technologies and increasingly assimilate them into our very being.  In my opinion, we should tread lightly and thoughtfully.

Cross Posted at Men Out Of Work Blog

My post over at Men Out Of Work Blog

Found this video via Althouse.  I have improvised the dialog:

Bumblebee in web:  Bro, do me a solid? (friend, can  you do me a favor, help me out?)

Other Bumblebee: Damn Skippy! (Yes!)