Monthly archive for July2014 - page 4

Old and busted: Second Hand Smoke Travels Through Walls! Must Be Stopped! New Hotness: Second Hand Smoke Travels Through Walls – Stop Whining About It!

Old and busted: Second Hand Smoke Travels Through Walls!  Must Be Stopped!  New Hotness: Second Hand Smoke Travels Through Walls – Stop Whining About It!

For what seems like decades now we have been warned about the danger of second hand smoke – not just the danger of wafting outdoor second hand smoke from the smokers exiled to their “areas” on the outskirts of society, but the just as deadly second hand smoke coming from inside your neighbor’s apartment or home.  The insidious tendrils of smoke are capable of wending their way through the smallest openings in the walls and creeping into your space where they can do their deadly deeds.  A man’s home may be his castle, but if you live next to a smoker’s castle you are within your rights to dictate that smoker’s behavior because his four walls give you no protection from that stinking scourge.  Of course, we’re talking about Tobacco smoke.  Cannabis smoke?  That’s Different!®

Just Google “second hand cigarette smoke apartments” – I’ll do it  – click here.  You get article after article explaining the health risks of your neighbor’s second hand smoke and advice on how to agitate your landlord to prohibit smoking completely in your complex, or even advice on how to take action against your neighbor smoking on his or her own property.  That is  – if they’re smoking the evil weed tobacco.  If they’re smoking pot – stop bugging us about it!  We can’t do anything because it’s legal.  Or so say the police in Colorado where recreational cannabis use was recently legalized.

I’ve said before that I don’t care if someone wants to smoke pot, especially if it’s legal where they live.  I also don’t care if someone wants to smoke cigarettes, which are legal everywhere last time I checked.  What I don’t like are double standards.  Sauce for the goose should be  sauce for the gander, and second hand smoke is second hand smoke.

 

Happy Independence Day!

Happy Independence Day!

On July 2nd, 1776, the Continental Congress voted on and passed a resolution of independence from Great Britain.  For two more days they debated the wording of their statement explaining their decision, and approved that statement on July 4th.  That statement was, of course The Declaration of Independence.   There is some debate about whether the Declaration was actually signed on July 4th, but it is known that it was voted on an accepted by the Congress on that date.

Signing the Declaration was an act of treason – an enormous risk for the signers to take to stand up for their principles  Though they were political leaders, they were not politicians.  Can you imagine any politcian today taking any similar stand for any reason at all?  Me neither.  I believe the easy lives we lead have made us soft in more ways than one.  Too bad.

But let’s celelebrate the fact that there were such men as these when they were needed!  Happy Birthday, America!  To kick off the celebration, here is Red Skelton pledging allegiance:

 

 

Finally, an excellent post on the meaning of Independence day at Powerline.  Well worth you time.

Independence Day Fireworks

Independence Day Fireworks

Hope you had a great day with lots of food, fun and family.  It’s time for fireworks!

Music Friday – Star Spangled Banner Edition

Music Friday – Star Spangled Banner Edition

It’s only fitting to celebrate Independence Day with our National Anthem, The Star Spangled Banner.   I present to you three versions, one traditionally performed and two…well, let’s say non-traditional but stirring nonetheless.

First up is – traditional; the US Army Field Band and Chorus:

The next rendition is a performance many find memorable – Whitney Houston’s 1991 performance at Super Bowl XXV.  Whatever you want to say about Whitney Houston, God Bless her for giving us this:

Finally, I suppose the most non-traditional, a flashmob.  Well, not exactly.  During the Kentucky All-State Choir Conference, all the attendees come out to the (huge) hotel lobby each night to sign the anthem:

Let Freedom Ring!

Music Friday – Independence Day Edition

Music Friday – Independence Day Edition

What better way to celebrate Independence Day than do it with marches by John Phillip Sousa, the American March King.  I’ll not wade into obscure waters today, but bring you three of Sousa’s best known marches performed by the United States Marine Band, apropos since Sousa was the director of the Marine Band for 12 years.

First up – the obvious choice, “Stars and Stripes Forever” :

Next up – “The Liberty Bell”:

Finally, with props to the US Marines, the official march of the Corps, “Semper Fidelis”:

 

Happy Independence Day, America!

Facebook TOS: You Agree To Let Us Manipulate Your Thoughts

Facebook TOS: You Agree To Let Us Manipulate Your Thoughts

I am always suspicious of people who want to offer me something for free.  As we all know, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.  Somebody’s paying somehow.  And it turns out that in exchange for Facebook’s “free” services all you have to do is surrrender your psyche.  VIA Popular Mechanics:

“A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed on the weekend that in January of 2012, Facebook manipulated the feeds of 689,003 English language users, making slight alterations to see if they could change the large scale mood of the populace. The answer was a resounding yes, a terrifying and appalling yes.” – Popular Mechanics 

Did you get that?  Through their manipulation of the news feeds of members, by featuring more positive or negative stories, Facebook was able to manipulate the feelings of those members – to make them either happier or angier based on the tenor of the members own postings.  The study referred to in the article proves that “social contagion”, or large scale manipulation of the moods of a society are possible – and Facebook is a proven tool for this end.  I have a lot to say about this, but not time to do it today  – but DO READ THE ARTICLE AT POPULAR MECHANICS.

“But the real scandal of the Facebook experiment was that the company was doing nothing illegal. You sign away your rights to be analyzed when you agree to Facebook’s terms of service.” – Popular Mechanics

So we have Google, vacuuming up all the information and data that exist, and Facebook manipulating your moods – what could possibly go wrong?  But hey…at least it’s free!

Cross Posted at Men Out of Work Blog

The Old Bold Pilots

The Old Bold Pilots

There is a sayingthat there are old pilots and there are bold pilots but there are no old bold pilots.  Meaning that “bold” piloting was risky piloting and therefore precluded a bold pilot’s reaching  “old pilot” status.  The statement is not universally true, and these guys are living proof.  Calling themselves the Old Bold Pilots Association, or OBPA, they number around 330, and every week at the Denny’s in Oceanside, California sixty or so of them show up for breakfast and a bull session.  And I would imagine those bull sessions are EPIC.  Though truth be told, most of these guys were young bold military pilots during wartime and were lucky or skilled enough to live through it to old age.  Some of their stories are shared in this Air & Space Magazine article  entitled Tales of the Old Bold Pilots.  It started out with a few retired military pilots just getting together to shoot the bull with other guys who had stories to share and it took off from there.

oldboldpilots-1100.jpg__800x600_q85_crop

some of the OBPA in front of the Oceanside Denny’s

 

I’ve know some old military pilots, war veterans – my father was one.  The stereotype that these guys are always sitting around reliving their escapades it total fiction.  They almost never talk about it…to people who havent experienced it themselves and can’t relate to it, that is.  My father never told his stories unless his friends came to visit, then the adults would retire to one room and we kids would overhear snippetts if we were even interested enough to eavesdrop.  Once I was old enough to care, I had to read the stories in old newspaper clippings or hear about them from others who were there.

So whenever these guys get together, their stories can be told and I’m glad for that.  Click over to the article to read a few, or click here or here to read a couple good ones at Men Out of Work Blog.

 

 

Everything you know is Wrong…what now?

Everything you know is Wrong…what now?

Garbage in, garbage out or GIGO was what they used to teach computer programmers back in the days of COBOL and FORTRAN.  COBOL and FORTRAN are the equivalents of Latin in computer programming language.  GIGO means what it says – if you put the wrong data in at the front, you’ll get wrong data out at the back.  And when this happens to you, Everything You Know is Wrong.

It is often said that a person is entitled to their own opinions; however, they are not entitled to their own facts.  Facts are facts.  Concrete and provable, they exist in their own right regardless of a person’s opinion of them.  “Disagreeing” with a fact doesn’t change it.  In today’s era of mass media countless people opine on various subjects, asserting strong opinions and making conclusory statements based on those opinions, yet their acquaintance with the facts may be more problematic.  If you mistake the opinions of people you agree with for facts, you are bound to go off the rails.  If your analysis of a situation begins with a fallacy, then all that follows will be more fallacy. Though I suspect there is a small chance that if an error is made in an analysis  of a fallacy, the right conclusion could be accidentally reached.  But I digress…

garbage_paradigm

 

There is another phrase with the acronym GIGO – it is “Garbage In, Gospel Out” and refers to people who have complete faith in computer generated data, and could also refer to a class of people who not only believe they are entitled to their own facts, they believe that no one has a right to disagree with them and their ill-drawn conclusions.  They have immense emotional investment in their opinions -there is a level of quasi-religious zealotry not often seen even among religious cultists, much less among rank and file churchgoers.  They have an unflappable faith in “the facts as they interpret them”, unable or more likely unwilling to waver from their dogma.  And…because their analyses eschew facts and embrace emotion, everything they know is wrong.

For example....

For example….

 

Pulling all this together into the context of The Big Picture: daily living is an exercise in observing facts, processing them, formulating reactions to them and then taking those actions.  If your data is bad, or your formula is bad then face it – everything you know is wrong.  Question is – what now?

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” 
-Bertrand Russell

There’s a chance that’s not true, but I doubt it.

 

 

The Unassailable Logic of the Los Angeles Unified School District

The Unassailable Logic of the Los Angeles Unified School District

Los Angeles Unified School Disrtict Board: We spent $1 billion to give every student an I-Pad and the program was a disaster.  Dang!  What do we do now?  I know!  Let’s give every student a laptop!  Now we’re talkin!

This falls under the headings of “never expect a bureaucrat to understand the real world” and “no idea is stupid if it’s for the children”.  Yes, the LAUSD spent a billion dollars to hand out I-Pads as a “homework aid” for the children.  What could go wrong?  Firewalls were installed to keep those krazy kidz off of the social networking and porn sites.  The kids would be using these strictly for doing their calculus, physics and chemistry homework.  I mean what’s the difference between some schmendrick on the street and a rocket scientist?  Well, the rocket scientist gots a computer.  So let’s give all the kids computers and they’ll be rocket scientists.  This education thing isn’t so hard after all!  Well, what could go wrong did go wrong.  When most of the I-Pads were broken, lost or stolen the district policy was sufficiently vague as to relieve the students or their parents of responsibility.  As far as the firewalls, it was a simple matter for the middle and high schoolers to recruit some third graders to disable those.

cracked-ipad

Now chastened, the LAUSD is assessing what went wrong and how to move forward, and they have decided that what went wrong was a “one device fits all” approach.

“Why would we treat all our students — whether they are a first-grader or a high school freshman — as if they all had the same technology needs? They don’t…. To have a one-device-fits-all approach does not make sense.”, said LAUSD Board Member Monica Ratliff.  

Obviously that was the problem.  The fact that a single device was used district wide made it simple to lose, destroy or steal them.  Allowing schools to choose from 6 different models of laptops will take care of that.  Problem solved.  Heckuva job, Monica!  You can’t expect all the kids to be able to use the same device, can you?  That’s just kooky.  They need choices.  Like in the real world when you go to work in an office and the first thing they do is let you choose what kind of computer you want…Oh wait.

Initial funding for the I-Pad program came from a bond measure which all Californians recognize as “free money” and therefore impossible to waste.  The source of additional funding is unclear, but why not just pass another bond measure?  Or pick it from trees?  Better yet…I hear North Korea is printing some fine facsimile US currency these days.

May I make a suggestion?  What went wrong was not a “one device fits all” approach, it was an “any device at all fits” approach.  The idea that a first grader, or any elementary school student needs a laptop or I-Pad to learn their lessons is ludicrous on it’s face and a colossal waste of allegedly scarce education funds.  I think you could make an argument that high schoolers need have access to computers at school so they have the opportunity to learn to use the computer as a tool.  It’s not the I-Pad or laptop that makes one smart.  It is a tool, like a pencil is a tool, and  a piece of paper is a tool.  The kids need to learn to work the computer that drives that pencil and paper – that’s the one between their ears.  If they can’t work that one, all the computers in the world aren’t going to help.

 

Everyone Knows This…revisited

Everyone Knows This…revisited

Everyone know you can’t reason with babies.  Has anyone told the dog?

 

Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ

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