Well, there goes “neutrality”.
Official: Google wants to tell you what to think • The Register.
Google wants to tell you what to think
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Monthly Archives: August 2009
2030 to 2050.
As the world’s population grows, competition for food, water and energy will increase. Food prices will rise, more people will go hungry, and migrants will flee the worst-affected regions.
BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | What is the 2030 Perfect Storm idea?.
I find this scary for 2 personal reasons: my wife and I, and our daughters. If you read other scenarios they point to 2050 and the exhaustion of oil. This isn’t one source, it is several. So if this ‘perfect storm’ does not happen then wars for oil will continue and intensify. The environment in which my daughters have grown up will change, will get worse. And in 2050 J and I will almost certainly not be around for them. That is scary and saddening.
Know Your Rights « Directionless Bones
That is, when someone kills me, they don’t violate my right to life, they violate me. When they cut off my arm or lock me in a cage, they don’t violate a different right, they violate me in a different way. So there’s no such question as ‘how many rights do people have?’, just ‘how many ways of violating a person are there?’
Another post about annoying America.
So the USA can take people who might have the wrong colour skin, have the wrong friends, live in the wrong place, not have ‘American’ as their first and only language, who have the wrong religion, who might have an accent, who might be any other arbitary factor and it can lock them up. It can make them disappear off the face of the earth. The USA can torture them, allow no contact with anyone else, can waterboard them, can deny them their basic rights and yet this is all in the name of the “American way”. It is true justice, it is done for the protection of everyone in the USA (because they don’t give a flying crap for anyone outside of the USA) and no matter what anyone else says they will do this for as long as they want. This is right. This is correct. This is how things should be done.
Yet when a minister in Scotland frees a man who is about to die, a man who a huge number of people believe never committed the crime, a man who was scapegoated then the USA demand that Justice Be Served. Now WTF is that all about? Apart from more hypocrisy from a regime that is purely selfish, a regime that has ignored the rest of woorld but expects the world to Listen To It. Who gives a damn if Hilary wanted the detention to continue? There isn’t a politician over there – probably anyone – who would dare to say “Hey guys, remember Guantanamo? Maybe we made a mistake with this one too”. The fact Obama et al. are complaining means zip – so why report it?
But then they execute innocent people in the USA and there is no-one there caring about them either.
USA. One annoying hypocritical paranoid and abusive country.
Firefox cpu
1. Open Firefox
2. Open Activity Monitor
3. Go to http://wordpress.com, let it fully load.
4. Watch Firefox CPU. If you do nothing the usage is around 1-3%
5. Go to http://google.com. I see 1-3% usage.
6. Go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/ I see usage of 1-35%
Safari is 5-40%. I assume it’s that single line of latest news.
Good words
One of the consequences of destroying the past, or making it inadmissible, is that you end up not being able to know where you came from. And then you don’t know here you’re going, and you can’t live in a hopeful present.
James Howard Kunstler as quoted in Good Experience Columns
Last time we abandoned the young, bits of Britain broke
This is no time to be young. Pity those leaving school, applying to college and university, graduating or job-seeking. They’re caught between an entirely predicted population bulge and an entirely avoidable cap on places. Unlucky the class of 2009, where tens of thousands may miss chances they thought promised after years of aspiration-raising by teachers and politicians.
Last time we abandoned the young, bits of Britain broke
| Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian
A new router
I’m looking for a new modem/router and rather than ask on twitter…
Current: Netgear DG834PN
Problem: If the PS3 is on the wireless network practically dies. I can sit with the laptop and router within a couple of feet and I get dialup speed. It’s a known issue with this model.
Desired: I really don’t want to get into setting WPA/WPA2 passwords. Too many machines and I’m too lazy. So restricting access by mac addressing is the way to go. Wifi table should hold around 20 devices. I know mac addresses can be spoofed but given where I live I’ll take the chance.
Cost: not hugely bothered.
I know the Airport base station exists but otherwise it depends which forum you ask, which website etc. I’m going to hunt around but do you have one that you think would definitely the better buy?
Books I need to finish
All are started, bookmarked, conveniently handy should I feel the need to read.
… that elegant three-star concoction is the collaborative effort of a team of “wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts and psychopaths,”
Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army
… how the Bush Administration has spent hundreds of millions of public dollars building a parallel corporate army, an army so loyal to far right causes it constitutes nothing less than a Republican Guard
In the summer of 1976 Gilmore robbed two men and then shot them in cold blood. No one had been executed in America for ten years but Gilmore, rather than have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment, wanted to die, and his ensuing battle with the authorities for the right to do so made him a worldwide celebrity and ensured that his execution turned into a gruesome media event.
One hundred classic stories from the celebrated author of Fahrenheit 451.
A Zen guide to the problems of daily living, love, relationships, work, fear and suffering. Combining earthly wisdom with spiritual enlightenment, it describes how to live each moment to the full and shows the relevance of Zen to every aspect of life.
Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear
A behind-the-scenes look at how the tactical use of words and phrases affects what people buy, who they vote for and even what they believe.
Reading is a habit that really should not be broken. But my habit is very broken so I need to make an effort to sit for 30 minutes a day and start to read. I love reading. I just need to do it more.
pqrst
So I said there were no worries….
Everything was normal yesterday morning. Nothing at all unusual. At some point mid-late morning (I forget the time. It’s in irc logs but it doesn’t matter) I had just chatted with Hanni on skype and gone afk from irc as I felt odd. Literally a few moments later I felt an incredible pain in my chest just under the sternum. I about doubled over, went very sweaty and I shook. Got to the bedroom and lay on the bed. Pain didn’t go, felt sick, still clammy. For the first time in forever I took my pulse. It was 52, regular and strong. That number worried me. Anyway, pain still there and I was feeling worse. Back to ‘work’ and I checked the nhsdirect site. It said ring 999. So I rang nhsdirect, said I probably didn’t need anything but some advice. She asked me some more questions and then she called 999. Hm.
Got downstairs and still in the same huge pain. Told J I didn’t feel so well and as I got to the door the ambulance arrived. Thankfully it’s siren wasn’t wailing, didn’t notice the lights.
I got an ECG done, did the usual Temp / BP / Pulse / history. Must have been a quiet day as I got taken in for a better ECG. The guy in the ambulance had already said it was not my heart. He didn’t know what it was and that I could stay in the hospital so they could work it out. As far as I was concerned though if my heart was good then the pain would be fine. At some point in this the pain had started to reduce but not so much it went completely. Part of it was probably worry about the pain. So, I’m not dead, not dying and this pain seems to be waning. And that was that – back home, back to work. Pretty quick too – though my signing some paper to say the equivalent of “Promise I won’t sue and this will keep you in the clear too” helped a lot. Very strange time. And why is pain so tiring?
I feel guilty that I used an ambulance and took time up when I wasn’t ill. I know I was ill but not ill ill, not in need of an ambulance. But how do you know? After how much new and unexpected pain close the heart do you wait? Not like you can rewind and call it earlier is it? I did apologise to the ambulance guys and said I’d rang nhsdirect. His reply was not to worry – they are known as nhsredirect. That was Friday.
And today I’ve felt generally crap. Nagging headache, bleurgh sort of thing.
That pulse. Took it last night and was getting around 62. Sat at the computer earlier today I was around 64 I think. When the ambulance guy took the pulse I said I’d got a 52 and he said he got a little over that. He asked about the exercises I do, figured I worked out. Like I have the time. Still, doing the house, bouncing up and down stairs many times a day and walking the dog twice a day must count for something I suppose.
Here’s hoping for a healthy Sunday!