Category: Rants and Raves

Why are we stuck with mediocre progress in the 21st century?

~ m ~ Leave a comment
Thanks for Ubuntu Mark! :-)

My brother and I were debating progress. I am quite frustrated that technological innovation in this millennium seems so stalled. Sure we’ve had the PC laptop cellphone tablet and smart phone, wiring us all together, and they’re innovative and great. But they’re basically just consumptive devices we use to shovel sensationalized images and sounds into our orifices to stimulate our ever-dulled senses.

Great innovators of the past brought us philosophy, plumbing, democracy, unlimited food, equality, the weekend, space travel, a leisure society, and so many paradigm shifts that jumped us forward in massive leaps. We are long long overdue for the next.

Perhaps we are mired in the early stage of the information age. We drown in it every day. We spend many of them just caught up in the torrential flood of information with our jaws agape.

Perhaps cycles are required. Perhaps it is the age of the right-wing redneck, pushing progress backwards in hopes that he can consume and destroy a lion’s share of resources just because his great grandfather did. That age will certainly not last too long before it implodes on itself.

Perhaps there are too many of us, and we’ve come so far that any one of us would have to spend a lifetime just to become an expert on the existing knowledge in a specific area, with very little chance to extend it.

But I still believe each of us should try to contribute. Our individual passion is our greatest strength.

Here’s an awkward debate on the subject…

Mark Shuttleworth says it right: “Individuals are innovators”!!! He’s got it! You have to be a crazy, obsessive, arrogant, megalomaniacal wacko and drive well past where any reasonable group of people would go.

Make sure you watch Edward Snowden discuss the “architecture of oppression”

~ m ~ Leave a comment

Important stuff. No simple answers. Any way you come down on it, if you are after truth, the Edward Snowden interviews by the Guardian are worth watching.

Clay Shirky always inspires me, and summarizes well…

It seems crazy to have to spell this out, but it should be hard for a government to keep secrets from its own people. National secrets are a necessary evil, of course, but the necessary part should not blind us to the evil part. Deciding to try to keep any given piece of information secret should be difficult, and expensive, and prone to occasional failure.

I will never forget that when George Bush declared war on Iraq, my initial reaction was to trust him because he had access to those “National secrets” that must… MUST justify his actions. That naive trust will never ever be restored. In the information age, we must seek truth, even – especially – in the dark corners of our government. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, so we must remain diligent citizens to sustain our freedom-based democracy.

As a final thought, I’m not so sure all these folks should be in such comfortable collusion…

Collusion

Gray Wolf Endangered Species delisting continues

~ m ~ Leave a comment

Gray Wolf

Please consider helping our wolf friends and signing this petition. There is so much animal abuse going on in our day and age, and these kind of large predators get the least consideration of them all. I know it’s hard to co-exist, so the easy route is to exterminate them. And there is lots of pressure from many directions to do just that. We don’t have unlimited chances to get this stuff right.

Here’s what I added to my petition signature:

AS SOON AS YOU DELIST THE SLAUGHTER BEGINS. And it will not take today’s modern hunters more than a few moments to destroy so much of what has been so difficult to accomplish and so fragile to maintain.

(cookiecutter text follows…)
I’m writing to you today to demand that the federal government not prematurely strip Endangered Species Act protections from most gray wolves in the United States.

The restoration of wolves has been hailed as one of the biggest successes of the Endangered Species Act since it was passed in 1973. But the important work of wolf recovery is unfinished. Delisting the gray wolf will halt four decades of progress in its tracks and expose America’s wolves to unwarranted and unsustainable killing.

This is precisely what has happened in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, where the premature delisting of those states’ wolf populations has led to the killing of more than 1,100 wolves. This race to the bottom in wolf management threatens to seriously undermine wolves’ hard-won climb from the brink of extinction.

Delisting could also derail efforts to restore wolves to more of their historic range that has huge areas of suitable wolf habitat, including Colorado, the Pacific Northwest, Utah and California.

Wolves are an iconic, native species that play a vital role in restoring healthy ecosystems by keeping prey species in balance. Places like the Olympic peninsula and the Colorado Rockies could benefit both ecologically and economically from the return of wolves.

Delisting would close the door on an historic opportunity to revitalize some of America’s best remaining wildlife habitat by bringing back these important animals.

Someday, when wolves have recovered throughout most of their historic range, and when states refrain from managing their wolf populations in a politically driven race to the bottom then perhaps delisting is an option worth debating. However, we are far from that day, and delisting now would be an avoidable conservation nightmare.

We urge you in the strongest possible terms to not turn the clock back on one of America’s signature wildlife conservation success stories. The future of full wolf recovery is in your hands.

Impeach NC Senators Brent Jackson (R), Andrew Brock (R) and Jim Davis (R)

~ m ~ 1 Comment

no_nuts

We reap what we sow, and now these three big-lobby colluders are proposing to dismantle all climate legislation (NC Senate Bill 171). Yes I said all. The fact that they could even sit down and come up with this bill is evidence that they are not interested in the good of the people, only the coffers of their sponsors.
These extremists are crafting our laws here in NC as we speak. Take a look at the bill proposals and voting records (Jackson, Davis, Brock) if you want more evidence. We have a lot of work to clean up NC politics, and it doesn’t end with just these three. Mike Hagar is sponsoring House Bill 298 (along with others), to eliminate requirements for utilities to provide even a small portion of power from renewables. Let’s pay careful attention here, this is not what we want for our children and our future. Please take enough of a role in politics to help keep this extremism at bay, and keep these extremists out of our government.

Motley Fool economic data on Presidents of the United States

~ m ~ 1 Comment

The Motley Fool is pretty good at being pragmatic, and continues that trend with this report on economic data under past POTUSes.  It’s very very simple, very concrete data in a few categories.  As with most real data, it’s not going to give you a single clean answer.  But if you compare Obama’s numbers to George Bush, it is fairly apparent that Obama has made the United States a better place for business.  Yes, the Democrat is better for business than the Republican, even though he also feels compelled to make simultaneous improvements in a whole array of services and regulations to better the lives of citizens.

If you are a “damn the facts” voter who votes with his or her heart, and the Romney camp has won you over, let me just point out that what you are being told and what will be done are likely far apart from each other.  As best as I can tell, the primary beneficiaries of a Romney presidency will be billionaires.  The rest of us will likely be collateral damage.

Peace out.

Reiley and I play shoot-em-up

~ m ~ Leave a comment

Black River Paintball
It’s on!
Played paintball with Reiley on Saturday, she’d been asking for a while and then Groupon provided the financial motivation with an all-day offer to play at Black River Paintball for half price. I was so intimidated and worried about it being too rough – I geared us up with baggy clothes and scarves around our soft fleshy necks. Good thing, we both took shots to the head! And had a total blast. After the first few minutes we were keeping up with all the teenage boys in style, dishing it out and ending up in most of the final firefights. We took our requisite bruises in stride with pride and are ready for more. The Angier location has some amazing fields, with forts, old cars on their sides, forest, bridges. The refs were great, always allowing Reiley and me to be on the same team. And everyone was nice and friendly, both staff and players.

Now if all the gun nutjobs would discover the joy of paintball – competition! team play! adrenaline! projectiles! – and give up the rest of it, this would be a kinder, gentler Nation. :-)

9.0 The Island

~ m ~ Leave a comment

The Island

A visually delicious action movie with a surprisingly solid scifi storyline. I didn’t expect much and had to keep picking my jaw off the floor.

NOTE: From here on out I’m trying to keep my reviews simple and spoiler-free. Even rating the movie invites the Heisenberg principle, and I won’t abide further spoilage. In this case, this also affects the screenshot I chose – there were better ones but they violate my ten inch that you enter the movie with a clean slate. Critics suck! You be the judge! :P

A specific example of broadband frustration in North Carolina

~ m ~ 3 Comments

Governor Perdue,

My newly-purchased house is 700′ from the road where Time Warner’s cable runs. Because they have a virtual monopoly, they want me to pay $3250 to run cable to my house before they will ALLOW me to pay for service on top of that.

I would like to express my outrage that you did not veto the recent bill that restricts municipalities’ ability to develop broadband solutions. It is abominable that you vocalized your disapproval of the bill but did not find the backbone to veto it. Many of us contacted you with our concerns but were not heard. Special interests have taken further root as a result, and our state will pay the price and lose further technological footing. I am now directly, severely impacted – along with many others. The Time Warner rep claimed that they are getting many people to actually pay these kind of extortionist fees to fund the build out of their own network – further increasing their monopoly.

Broadband service is of such fundamental importance to our communities that we must find a way to do better. Not vetoing the municipality restriction bill was a major step backwards for us all. I hope you can find a way to move us forward again.

I’ll be posting this to my blog, facebook, etc. and getting the word out wherever and whenever possible.

Thanks for listening,
Michael

Addendum: Yes I am using Time Warner services to host this blog. Yes they have provided me with great service for 11 years. But some corollary of Murphy’s Law applies to broadband access. It should be getting better and cheaper at a faster rate than their monopoly allows.

Would I be writing this if I happened to get an easy service hookup? Probably not. But I did send a previous note to the Governor when I heard about the ridiculous bill.

The bottom line is that broadband internet access is too fundamental a need of the people to be left to a few corporations and a bought-off government. Just like with other basic utilities, the people’s government should ensure that everything is in place, including free market competition as well as government oversight, to provide the people with the best-possible service over shared resources like easements and lines. Municipal broadband, where the people come together to create something good, is an excellent means to that end.

9.5 Beastie Boys: Make Some Noise

~ m ~ 2 Comments

Yes I am a Beastie Boys fanboy. As Johnny Cash said so well, “until you know my shame you really don’t know me”. I grew up on New Jersey playgrounds, cursing (not “cussing”, that’s what rednecks in FL did) my head off since I was ten. To me, my brother’s actual name was jerk-off. I just didn’t know any better. I hit punk right on the mark around the age of 12 – I remember my dad walking into my room and hearing someone on my favorite NY radio station say something rude and what in the world was I listening to and me replying “I don’t listen to the words, just the music”. New wave was next and swept us all up, smashing molds and bringing sweet melodies and new sonic fabrics. And then came hip hop in the form of Run DMC and Beastie Boys and Public Enemy, and it was loud and strong, and continued to rip the fabric of everything that came before it – literally in this case. The industrial music of Ministry and Meat Beat Manifesto was the last great one for me. From then on, everything else was just recycling – Grunge, Shoegaze, LoFi, whatever – I’d heard it all before.

I guess this is the definition of being old. I have become one of those “classic rock” fanatics that I never understood during my youth. But when we were young, each of those early changes meant something to us, ripping off the lid on something brand new and knocking us to the floor, winded.

And I could feel my roots when I turned up the Beastie Boys. They are smart-ass New Yorkers with ADD. Like FAMILY. :P

If your sophomoric sense of humor remains intact, you may continue to enjoy their craft. This album went through extra refinement (due to MCA’s cancer battle, keep on good man) like a fine wine. Peace out to life-lovin’ cancer-fightin’ vegan-tryin’ Yauch, who directed this joint… WARNING: EXPLICIT CONTENT, this is not for women or children or anyone else with any sense or maturity whatsoever. Self-parody at its finest. And check the crew they brought for this one, stellar.