It is remarkable that a human can create anything larger than what can be contained in a canvas, or on a single sheet of paper. Novels, cars, software...these are monumentally complex objects, and if their true complexity were ever to be appreciated, I doubt anyone would have the heart to attempt their creation.
Despite the inherent difficulty, people still create large works, and sometimes successfully. That success is rare and precious, and should not be taken for granted.
Whole Foods mixed message
Whole Foods customers to the tune of about $16 per pound.
This is an example of a dilemma faced by Eco-tourists - they love
nature and want to preserve it, but they also want to hike in it and
enjoy it. But sometimes it's not possible to do both.
It's interesting to me that the same person who insists on organic
foods, recycled toilet paper and fuel efficient cars would buy
something so incredibly unsustainable as salt taken from the tallest
oldest mountains in the world.
Movie: How to Loose a Guy in 10 Days
This is an old RomCom, and I'm only reviewing it because it was, like so many recent movies, both entertaining and troubling. Entertaining because it is in part a comedy of modern manners. Troubling because of it's rampant misogyny. And because it was recommended by a female friend I find it even more troubling.
The women in this picture are portrayed almost universally in a negative light. No, I get the premise - I understand that Kate Hudson's character "Andy" is trying to act like a crazy woman in order to push her love interest "Ben" away for the sake of a magazine article. I'm not really talking about those antics. I'm talking about her "real" behavior as a vapid, image-obsessed, vain, self-serving and manipulative woman. The other women who surround her are equally ethics-challenged and quite weak. "Mrs. Lauer", wife to the De Laur diamond magnate, is the classic cougar, in all her tasteless glory. In truth her over-the-top performance worked comedically.
The only positive role-models for women would be Ben's compeition. Two women given only cameos who seemed cool, collected, and focusedl. Of course, they still get beat out by the man though.
It troubles me that "reproductive fitness" for a woman in this movie (and in so many others) has been reduced down to having the right weight, clothing, and make-up, and avoiding certain behavioral faux paus. What happened to intelligence, compassion, energy, and kindness? Indeed, in this regard men hardly fair better in the movie - "reproductive fitness" for a man is reduced to six pack abs, a full head of hair, and a well appointed New York apartment, and the ability to put up with an excess amount of abusive female drama.
As an added little kick in the ribs, the movie portrays vegetarians and vegetarianism in a harsh light: vegetarian food is apparently tasteless and unsatisfying, and those who serve it are ugly, judgmental, and rude.
The women in this picture are portrayed almost universally in a negative light. No, I get the premise - I understand that Kate Hudson's character "Andy" is trying to act like a crazy woman in order to push her love interest "Ben" away for the sake of a magazine article. I'm not really talking about those antics. I'm talking about her "real" behavior as a vapid, image-obsessed, vain, self-serving and manipulative woman. The other women who surround her are equally ethics-challenged and quite weak. "Mrs. Lauer", wife to the De Laur diamond magnate, is the classic cougar, in all her tasteless glory. In truth her over-the-top performance worked comedically.
The only positive role-models for women would be Ben's compeition. Two women given only cameos who seemed cool, collected, and focusedl. Of course, they still get beat out by the man though.
It troubles me that "reproductive fitness" for a woman in this movie (and in so many others) has been reduced down to having the right weight, clothing, and make-up, and avoiding certain behavioral faux paus. What happened to intelligence, compassion, energy, and kindness? Indeed, in this regard men hardly fair better in the movie - "reproductive fitness" for a man is reduced to six pack abs, a full head of hair, and a well appointed New York apartment, and the ability to put up with an excess amount of abusive female drama.
As an added little kick in the ribs, the movie portrays vegetarians and vegetarianism in a harsh light: vegetarian food is apparently tasteless and unsatisfying, and those who serve it are ugly, judgmental, and rude.
Idea: Annotated music streams
The KCRW Music Stream is a wonderful resource - it's a free, commercial free, internet resource for a constant stream of thoughtfully selected, interesting music. My only gripe with it is that it can be hard to identify a song that you like. It's true that the DJ announces the artist/track/album on occasion, however this is not terribly convenient. It would be nice if the player (iTunes in my case) could display this information automatically.
Note that KCRW provides track information on the web, but it's not very easy to get to. It would be better to annotate the stream such that the information is already available in the player.
One workaround is Shazam - indeed it's a strange day when one holds their iPhone up to the computer speaker to identify a song! (This reminds me of another idea I had that would use OCR to make a bitmap brochure site SEO friendly...)
Anyway, the economics would seem to make this workable. After all, if I like a song enough to click somewhere, I'm probably willing to buy the song. (Indeed, this is Shazam's business model, from what I can tell).
Note that KCRW provides track information on the web, but it's not very easy to get to. It would be better to annotate the stream such that the information is already available in the player.
One workaround is Shazam - indeed it's a strange day when one holds their iPhone up to the computer speaker to identify a song! (This reminds me of another idea I had that would use OCR to make a bitmap brochure site SEO friendly...)
Anyway, the economics would seem to make this workable. After all, if I like a song enough to click somewhere, I'm probably willing to buy the song. (Indeed, this is Shazam's business model, from what I can tell).
The value of greed, fear, and vanity.
Mortgages create fear, which in turn creates productive people, which is in the end good for everyone.
It seems that the most common motivations for success are fear and greed. Vanity and simple obsession follow a close second. Sheer joy in the work is perhaps the least common. In the west most people are motivated by fear - that is the true value of the mortgage culture. Instinctively people know that they need fear to function, to survive. While all people are motivated in the short term by greed, long term greed (usually mixed with vanity) is rewarded by the investor culture.
I make these comments without prejudice. In many ways I think any wealthy society owe fear and greed a debt of gratitude - without them, individuals and organizations could very well grind to a halt, too content for their own good. Indeed, there have been times in my life where I could have used a larger dose of fear to get me over a particularly difficult hurdle.
Consistent joyful motivation to excellence is quite rare. It is probably not possible without being an abstract thinker, and so able to derive pleasure and direction from an abstract ideal. The joyful motivation in its pure form seems more consistent with religious striving than with economic striving but n truth, I think that this motivation is shared by all at certain points in time. For example, the movie mogul (who is normally motivated by greed and vanity) may step back once in a while and appreciate the movie for the work of art that it is.
It seems that the most common motivations for success are fear and greed. Vanity and simple obsession follow a close second. Sheer joy in the work is perhaps the least common. In the west most people are motivated by fear - that is the true value of the mortgage culture. Instinctively people know that they need fear to function, to survive. While all people are motivated in the short term by greed, long term greed (usually mixed with vanity) is rewarded by the investor culture.
I make these comments without prejudice. In many ways I think any wealthy society owe fear and greed a debt of gratitude - without them, individuals and organizations could very well grind to a halt, too content for their own good. Indeed, there have been times in my life where I could have used a larger dose of fear to get me over a particularly difficult hurdle.
Consistent joyful motivation to excellence is quite rare. It is probably not possible without being an abstract thinker, and so able to derive pleasure and direction from an abstract ideal. The joyful motivation in its pure form seems more consistent with religious striving than with economic striving but n truth, I think that this motivation is shared by all at certain points in time. For example, the movie mogul (who is normally motivated by greed and vanity) may step back once in a while and appreciate the movie for the work of art that it is.
The Man is hosting a music festival!
The Man is hosting this years misnamed "West Beach Music & Arts Festival". Check out their rules:
I mean, really? You're going to host a 3 day music event and do not allow blankets or chairs? "No outside food or drinks" has a rather obvious economic incentive - but I fail to see the case against blankets. And what about the ban on "Professional Cameras"?
I wonder how many artists would play this "festival" if they knew the rules?
I mean, really? You're going to host a 3 day music event and do not allow blankets or chairs? "No outside food or drinks" has a rather obvious economic incentive - but I fail to see the case against blankets. And what about the ban on "Professional Cameras"?
I wonder how many artists would play this "festival" if they knew the rules?
Nice phishing attempt!
What gets you is the implication that someone has charged something to your paypal account - something that is all too possible, alas.
Sweet! Another request to use a photo
I realize it's not much, but this is the 4th time someone has asked to use a photo from my flickr stream. As an amatuer with very little experiene, I think that's just great. (I've no doubt that the really good photographers get that many requests per day - but I'm happy). Here's the image they like:
(For a book called "Superbikes", being produced in Japan.)
[Update: okay, I have to mention the irony here: this GS500 is in really really bad condition! If you look closely you can see the rust, and the tires are completely bald. There was a persistent oil leak that made riding it dangerous. I think it had something like 100k miles on it when I snapped this photo. It qualifies as a superbike only in the sense that it was super durable!]
(For a book called "Superbikes", being produced in Japan.)
[Update: okay, I have to mention the irony here: this GS500 is in really really bad condition! If you look closely you can see the rust, and the tires are completely bald. There was a persistent oil leak that made riding it dangerous. I think it had something like 100k miles on it when I snapped this photo. It qualifies as a superbike only in the sense that it was super durable!]
Why templates are just a special case of AJAX
I've been writing webapps with template languages for some time. Templates are a nice way to stay as close as possible to the original, static HTML. I've noticed that with Ajax in general, and jQuery in particular, one can get even closer to not modifying static HTML. I've also noticed that templating can and should be done on both the client and server.
There's a very nice Ajax architecture that basically dictates that you make a request against the server, retrieve meaningful data (rather than data embedded in presentation) as XML and then insert that data into the DOM. This is precisely how server-side templates work! The only difference is that the data is not serialized, and is generally some architecture specific form. For example, in Java the template data may be object graphs embedded in a HashMap.
A server-side template, then, could theoretically be replaced by an Ajax call, if the template worked on the client. For some years now, there's been XSLT support in all modern web clients, and XSLT can indeed be used as a templating language of sorts. However, XSLT is verbose, unwieldy, and therefore fails miserably in the only criterion that matters: does the architecture minimize the mutations you have to make to static HTML?
Actually, I think it would be a nifty thing to do client-side only templates, but for practical reasons I don't think such an architecture would fly (first, because some clients don't support meaningful programmatic execution of any sort, and second, because you'd have to take special care to avoid that initial loadind performance hit). Therefore one needs a solution that can execute in both places. XSLT can indeed work both server and client side, but as we've seen it's a less than optimal solution.
The approach I like is to use JavaScript for the templating language. Indeed, one codes the software as if it was client-side only Ajax, and then rely on runtime parameters to tell the server to exec that initial XHR on the server. This is made possible in a Java server by two pieces of technology, Rhino, and John Resig's env.js. It works, it's nice, and I'll write about it in more detail if there is interest.
There's a very nice Ajax architecture that basically dictates that you make a request against the server, retrieve meaningful data (rather than data embedded in presentation) as XML and then insert that data into the DOM. This is precisely how server-side templates work! The only difference is that the data is not serialized, and is generally some architecture specific form. For example, in Java the template data may be object graphs embedded in a HashMap.
A server-side template, then, could theoretically be replaced by an Ajax call, if the template worked on the client. For some years now, there's been XSLT support in all modern web clients, and XSLT can indeed be used as a templating language of sorts. However, XSLT is verbose, unwieldy, and therefore fails miserably in the only criterion that matters: does the architecture minimize the mutations you have to make to static HTML?
Actually, I think it would be a nifty thing to do client-side only templates, but for practical reasons I don't think such an architecture would fly (first, because some clients don't support meaningful programmatic execution of any sort, and second, because you'd have to take special care to avoid that initial loadind performance hit). Therefore one needs a solution that can execute in both places. XSLT can indeed work both server and client side, but as we've seen it's a less than optimal solution.
The approach I like is to use JavaScript for the templating language. Indeed, one codes the software as if it was client-side only Ajax, and then rely on runtime parameters to tell the server to exec that initial XHR on the server. This is made possible in a Java server by two pieces of technology, Rhino, and John Resig's env.js. It works, it's nice, and I'll write about it in more detail if there is interest.
A pretty sweet band: Lowen and Navarro
This band was introduced to my by a neighbor - who is the niece of Navarro. They have a mature, soulful vibe with some pretty tight song writing ability. They sound like they'd be a good live show.
Idea: Recover my stolen stuff (dot com)
Ok, so I just had a camera with lenses stolen, and I'm determined to find it. How can I do that? One thing is to register the SN with the national stolen goods registry (whatever that is - I could find no reference on the Internet).
Another thing I was going to try is to see if the combination of items was for sale in the usual places: craigslist, ebay, the recycler, and the local used photography places. But that's a lot of work, and I think that at least some of it could be automated.
So why not "recovermystolenstuff.com"?
Another thing I was going to try is to see if the combination of items was for sale in the usual places: craigslist, ebay, the recycler, and the local used photography places. But that's a lot of work, and I think that at least some of it could be automated.
So why not "recovermystolenstuff.com"?
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