To the surprise of absolutely no one who thought this through for more than about two minutes, it turns out that the wooly mammoth video is a hoax. I know, shocking!
It appears that a story last week about a hairy, woolly mammoth seen walking across a Siberian river is a hoax.
In the opening frame of the blurry video that went viral, an animal is seen moving through the Kitoy River. Superimposed over the video are the words: Siberian Mammoth, Copyright Michael Cohen/Barcroft Media
That's where the controversy and accusations began to fly.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/13/woolly-mammoth-hoax-confirmed_n_1273952.html
Meme (n): an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, esp. imitation.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Now All Americans Are Losing Ground—David Frum - The Daily Beast
To be an employer means that you pay a fair day's wage for a fair day's work. If your firm goes broke, you go broke too. You don't take advantage of clients or customers. As a voter and citizen, you try to think about what is best for everyone, not just you. You eschew ostentation when times are good, and you pay your fair share of the cost when times are bad. Your good name matters more than money. Your contributions to your community define your good name. Whenever you are inclined to criticize anyone, just remember that not everybody was born with the advantages you had.
(David Frum)
The man who wrote this is a conservative. He is also right.
(David Frum)
The man who wrote this is a conservative. He is also right.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Amazon 'Cancelled order' phish-bait
Some Internet sleaze ball spammer has hit on the idea of trying to fake people out by sending the following email. The idea being that you say “what order!” and then click on the link. That then takes you to God knows where. Instead of clicking the link, go to your regular Amazon.com bookmark just to make sure that your account hasn’t been hacked.
Your order has been successfully canceled. For your reference, here’s a summary of your order:
You just canceled order #155-529594-6657462 placed on February 4, 2012.
Status: CANCELED
______________________________
_______________________________________
1 of The Acuity Special Edition
By: Olwen Roberts
Sold by: Amazon.com LLC
_____________________________________________________________________
Thank you for visiting Amazon.com!
-----
Amazon.com
Earth’s Biggest Selection
http://www.amazon.com
Your order has been successfully canceled. For your reference, here’s a summary of your order:
You just canceled order #155-529594-6657462 placed on February 4, 2012.
Status: CANCELED
______________________________
_______________________________________
1 of The Acuity Special Edition
By: Olwen Roberts
Sold by: Amazon.com LLC
_____________________________________________________________________
Thank you for visiting Amazon.com!
-----
Amazon.com
Earth’s Biggest Selection
http://www.amazon.com
Monday, January 23, 2012
Parade for Vets in the PDX
So I was watching Rachel Maddow and she interviewed a gentleman who is putting together a parade for veterans of the post-9/11wars. I would like to see something done like here in Portland. How this happens I don’t just yet but it should be doable.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Gay rights and the corporate, capitalist world
Andrew Sullivan, over at Daily Dish, makes the point--and one would be hard pressed to say he’s wrong in this instance--that the recent news that all of the companies on the Fortune Best 100 Companies to Work For list have anti-discrimination clauses that protects queer people is a triumph of the market. None of these companies are pandering or catering to a queer audience and they aren’t doing it for any particularly noble motive. Rather, they want the best talent they can get and do not want to lose that talent because someone is queer. Given that we’ve been waiting for ENDA for the better part of a quarter century but this change has happened right under our noses, I’m hard pressed to say that the market didn’t work.
A story from my way-back days in tech will be illustrative here. I used to work for a start-up in Oakland. This was my third job in the computer industry. I came in the door as employee thirteen. When I started, the company did not cover domestic partner benefits. As I was doing all of my paperwork on day one, the office manager came to me and said, “Don’t fill out your insurance forms yet. We don’t cover DP because it never came up before but now it has so I just have to call Aetna and it’ll take a few days to get it all sorted.” At the time I was only dating some woman, we’d had all of two dates and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I didn’t have a domestic partner.
That said, the next three hires were queer and so they benefitted from it. I was kicked out of the military for being queer. I never lost my job for being queer and in all the time I’ve worked in the field (since 1994) I can only think of one time that my being queer was the likely cause I didn’t get a job and that was because the organization was an arm of the Lutheran church. Since 1994, I’ve worked for two non-profits (including the YWCA), two start-ups and two multinationals. I’ve been treated fairly and equitably and been a valued member of the teams I was on.
I will give the last word to Sullivan.
A story from my way-back days in tech will be illustrative here. I used to work for a start-up in Oakland. This was my third job in the computer industry. I came in the door as employee thirteen. When I started, the company did not cover domestic partner benefits. As I was doing all of my paperwork on day one, the office manager came to me and said, “Don’t fill out your insurance forms yet. We don’t cover DP because it never came up before but now it has so I just have to call Aetna and it’ll take a few days to get it all sorted.” At the time I was only dating some woman, we’d had all of two dates and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I didn’t have a domestic partner.
That said, the next three hires were queer and so they benefitted from it. I was kicked out of the military for being queer. I never lost my job for being queer and in all the time I’ve worked in the field (since 1994) I can only think of one time that my being queer was the likely cause I didn’t get a job and that was because the organization was an arm of the Lutheran church. Since 1994, I’ve worked for two non-profits (including the YWCA), two start-ups and two multinationals. I’ve been treated fairly and equitably and been a valued member of the teams I was on.
I will give the last word to Sullivan.
This is not because they are somehow being noble. It is because they are serving their shareholders by employing the absolutely best people for the jobs they have and do not want to miss someone's talents because of something irrelevant like sexual orientation.
Hence capitalism enables equality. And the last entity to get with the program is the government.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
David Frum - The Daily Beast
I saw this the other day at Frum Forum and then read the whole article at Prospect magazine
This may be something that we on the left will have to face sooner or later and, for my money, I would have it sooner. Neither the American left or right seems to truly grasp that the very nature of politics is trade-offs. The left, admirably pursuing diversity, has become blind to the fact that in doing so we may have fractured the social bonds that tie us together as Americans. Unlike, say, the Japanese who have a--more or less--common ancestry, history and heritage we Americans are tied together solely through commitment to an ideal and a history that may have some of us placed in the role of outsider or the target to whom the history happened. So like the British but unlike, say, the Germans part of the challenge for us as Americans is to figure out how to see the national story as being our story. Currently, those on the American left are likely to see our national story and ideals as something deeply and profoundly alien to us even though it may be the only story we know well. Instead of seeing the founding of America as the start of something great and good, we see it as the beginning of an unending string of horrors visited upon blacks, Native Americans, mestizos, Japanese and Chinese immigrants, etc. While there is historical accuracy to this portrait, it is not the whole of the story nor is it necessarily where we should want our focus to be.
It is difficult enough for a nation as diverse as ours to hold itself together. It is even more of a challenge when we do not feel that our national story has anything to offer minority populations outside of a long list of grievances and broken promises. What’s more, the more we emphasize that which makes us different and hold that up as far more important and noble than that which makes us similar, we will have a very difficult time convincing our fellow citizens that we need a stronger social safety net.
And therein lies one of the central dilemmas of political life in developed societies: sharing and solidarity can conflict with diversity. This is an especially acute dilemma for progressives who want plenty of both solidarity – high social cohesion and generous welfare paid out of a progressive tax system – and diversity – equal respect for a wide range of peoples, values and ways of life. The tension between the two values is a reminder that serious politics is about trade-offs. It also suggests that the left’s recent love affair with diversity may come at the expense of the values and even the people that it once championed.
This may be something that we on the left will have to face sooner or later and, for my money, I would have it sooner. Neither the American left or right seems to truly grasp that the very nature of politics is trade-offs. The left, admirably pursuing diversity, has become blind to the fact that in doing so we may have fractured the social bonds that tie us together as Americans. Unlike, say, the Japanese who have a--more or less--common ancestry, history and heritage we Americans are tied together solely through commitment to an ideal and a history that may have some of us placed in the role of outsider or the target to whom the history happened. So like the British but unlike, say, the Germans part of the challenge for us as Americans is to figure out how to see the national story as being our story. Currently, those on the American left are likely to see our national story and ideals as something deeply and profoundly alien to us even though it may be the only story we know well. Instead of seeing the founding of America as the start of something great and good, we see it as the beginning of an unending string of horrors visited upon blacks, Native Americans, mestizos, Japanese and Chinese immigrants, etc. While there is historical accuracy to this portrait, it is not the whole of the story nor is it necessarily where we should want our focus to be.
It is difficult enough for a nation as diverse as ours to hold itself together. It is even more of a challenge when we do not feel that our national story has anything to offer minority populations outside of a long list of grievances and broken promises. What’s more, the more we emphasize that which makes us different and hold that up as far more important and noble than that which makes us similar, we will have a very difficult time convincing our fellow citizens that we need a stronger social safety net.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Ron Paul loves straw men
Listening to Ron Paul’s speech this evening it was interesting his enthusiastic use of straw men:
- “All these bleeding hearts who said we can just give everyone a free house and they can borrow off the equity…”
Three patents does not a Perpetual Motion Machine make
Just reading around on Huffington Post I saw yet another add for a perpetual motion machine. What I found most entertaining about this claim (outside of the LULZ inherent in this kind of flapdoodle) was this: The “HoJo Motor” is the only device that produces “Free Energy” that has 3 U.S. Patents!
Perpetual motion machines (and all ‘free energy’ devices are perpetual motion machines) violate either the first law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy) or the second law of thermodynamics (conservation of work).
The first law states that in a closed system you cannot create new energy. This device, the Johnson motor, appears to violate the first law. The claim is that you can generate work without having to input energy. The argument is essentially this: you give an initial impetus to the device and then, once it is going, it will continue to generate more energy than is needed to keep it going.
The second law states that in a closed system, whenever work is done *some* energy is loss to friction etc. In other words, you cannot have an engine that is *so* efficient that 100% of the energy input into the system is used.
The argument against all forms of free energy is this:
1) You cannot get free energy. In other words, you cannot get *more* energy out of a system than you put into it (1st law)
2) In any system where work is done (e.g. a change of states happens because of energy put into the system) some will be loss because of inefficiencies.
3) Therefore, you cannot make a machine that makes enough energy that it can either keep itself going without an external input or get out more energy than you put in.
All ‘free energy’ advertisements are scams don’t fall for ‘em!
- Produce Free Electricity For Your Home and Appliances in Just 48 Hours With The "Howard Johnson Motor" (HoJo Motor) - The only "Free Energy Device" to have 3 U.S. Patents! | HoJo Motor
- http://www.hojomotor.com/vid
- >Produce Free electricity for your home and appliances in just 2 days!<
- No, you won’t be able to do this.
- >Fire the Greedy electric companies and supply more of your own electricity!<
- NO, you won’t be doing that either. Rather, you’ll be giving the greedy, self-deluding scam peddler lots of money as well as your greedy electric company.
- >Reduce your carbon footprint and help the environment!<
- Get a bicycle, it will actually work.
Perpetual motion machines (and all ‘free energy’ devices are perpetual motion machines) violate either the first law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy) or the second law of thermodynamics (conservation of work).
The first law states that in a closed system you cannot create new energy. This device, the Johnson motor, appears to violate the first law. The claim is that you can generate work without having to input energy. The argument is essentially this: you give an initial impetus to the device and then, once it is going, it will continue to generate more energy than is needed to keep it going.
The second law states that in a closed system, whenever work is done *some* energy is loss to friction etc. In other words, you cannot have an engine that is *so* efficient that 100% of the energy input into the system is used.
The argument against all forms of free energy is this:
1) You cannot get free energy. In other words, you cannot get *more* energy out of a system than you put into it (1st law)
2) In any system where work is done (e.g. a change of states happens because of energy put into the system) some will be loss because of inefficiencies.
3) Therefore, you cannot make a machine that makes enough energy that it can either keep itself going without an external input or get out more energy than you put in.
All ‘free energy’ advertisements are scams don’t fall for ‘em!
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