When my girlfriend first saw my Mac I could see the envy in her eyes. Who wouldn’t envy this sexy machine? Soon after Lauren took the plunge and switched. She now has officially become a card carrying, windows bashing Mac user and I think it’s great! Let’s compare notes: She has her own blog, she bashes windows, she loves sports, and has a strange fascination with the TiVo. Yeah. You’re jealous. I know.
I was walking through the halls of the student union at EMU when I noticed something: All of the stuff hanging from the walls was made of highly biodegradable materials.
Our ancestors carved their legacy into giant stone cathedrals, caves, and pyramids. 21st century humans use CD’s, paper, and silicon wafers. All of which are known to decay. To compound the problem humans of tomorrow might not know how to read a CD. Hell, a working cassette player is becoming harder and harder to find.
My fear in noticing this is that the humans of tomorrow will misinterpret the things we have created that will stand the test of time, such as the odd abstract art that is found outside of buildings, various space debris, and our buildings. I envision a lot of head scratching, which, in the case of the abstract art, isn’t much different than the humans of today.
There’s an interesting story at CNN.com where US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia proclaims there is too much separation of church and stat in the US today.
I’m not religious. I’ve never particularily liked organized religion. I can understand the comfort people take in religion, but I’m a strong supporter of separation of church and state. This aside, I think Justice Scalia has some interesting points. Most notably this one:
The Constitution says the government cannot “establish” or promote religion, but Scalia said the framers did not intend for God to be stripped from public life.
I agree that our founders didn’t want to abolish religion, rather they want to make sure the government didn’t have any part in religion.
Where I differ from Justice Scalia is in him saying that “one nation, under God” should not have been stripped from the Pledge of Allegance. There are two things to note here: 1.) the “under God” part was only recently added to the Pledge this century and 2.) the Constitution plainly states “cannot promote”, which “under God” is doing in the Pledge.
Many may not agree with my analysis, which is fine, but you have to agree that putting “In God We Trust” on every coin minted in the US is some sort of promotion. The thing that makes me so angry about the religious right is their inability to recognize the founders want to allow everyone to practice their own religion of choice. What if I wanted to pray to the almighty god of “Joe” before basketball games? Why isn’t “In Allah We Trust” on a coin? I’m willing to bet these actions would be met with widespread outcry. Hypocrisy anyone?
What is it with prescription drug commercials not telling you what the drug is about? Zocor has a commercial where Dan Reid, the Atlanta Falcons head coach, talks of the advantages of the drug, but not once does he mention what it does. After looking through the website I see that it is used in conjunction with dietary modifications to lower your cholesterol.
What I find so ironic is that the the FDA calls drug ads misleading based on what they perceive to be misleading sales pitches. I think that if I don’t know what the hell the drug does I could care less about the sales pitch.
Evidently the FDA agrees with me that drug commercials are confusing. You can do a Google search for more info.
Since I recently sold my old Samsung I300 I’ve decided to purchase a TiVo. Being the geek that I am and knowing the hackability of these awesome little devices I went to Google to see what kind of hacks I could find. I found a plethora of TiVo knowledge at the Complete TiVo FAQ. This covers everything from upgrading the hard drives to installing NIC’s.
So where to go from here? TiVo is running a special on their refurbished 60hr series 2 recievers for $149 (USD) right now, which is pretty darn cheap. Follow that up with a TiVo AirNET card and you have a wireless TiVo just BEGGING to be hacked! All for less than $250.00! I can already see that I’ll be spending a lot of time pimping out my TiVo (wonder if Debian has been ported). Wonder if you’ll hear me complaining about my TiVo being hacked in the near future …
One of my favorite blogs, debris.com wrote up a quick editorial on the destructive nature of SUV’s and how they can be linked to terrorism. I totally agree that SUV’s should be restricted in some sense. Give me one good reason why anyone would need to drive a Ford Excursion when they live in suburbia!
It’s official. I’m not inspired by school anymore. I fell asleep in my Oracle class while the teacher taught what a “primary key” was. I sit in the class in awe of the people who surround me. I’ll be working with these people someday. Maybe I’m a geek elitist, but I truly think that people who go into IT so they can make good money will be sorely let down. Do they really think they can stumble through an enterprise level system rollout with a few IS classes and a book?
I guess I can look at it in another light: I’ll have lots of people to manage when I graduate. What pains me most is that the teachers are teaching these kids that you should create applications using Access. Sure Access works well for small office situations, but do they expect to run companies off of this? Maybe I’m living in a dream world.
I eat meat. Being born and raised in the midwest means that you eat meat and lots of it. I came accross this article that points out many animals are killed while harvesting vegetables. The author’s references can be found here and here. The point I’d like to make is that neither vegan nor meat eating are humane eating standards. With vegan thousands and thousands of field animals (squirrels, skunks, etc.) are killed and forced from habitats. With meat eating harmless cows are killed everyday. This means, in my opinion, that the moral issue is null. Either way innocent animals are killed so we can live.
I won’t argue with the other side of the argument, which says being a vegan is more healthy. Wendy’s, Taco Bell, and Jersey Giant aren’t the best ways to reach phsyical nirvana. However, many studies have shown that living without any kinds of meat, milk, or cheese can lead to serious deficiencies in calcium and iron.
Evidently, teachers and administrators can be total morons in other countries as well. A 4th grade teacher from Japan was arrested for breaking a pupil’s jaw for finishing up lunch late. You’ve got to be kidding me.
At my previous place of employment it was common for the entire engineering team (yes all three of us) to get lunch together. This meant one of us was stuck riding in the back seat. We became accustomed to calling “Shotgun” and accordingly followed the official shotgun rules. It’s a great read and brings up many, many memories of high school trips to the mall and movies.