Every keyboard is configured to optimize typing speed in the language or languages of the country it was designed for.
Good deduction but not quite right, the QWERTY system was designed to slow down typing speeds at a time when mechanical hammers tended to jam easily. According to an old school geek, a better, speedier configuration for a keyboard would be DVORAK.
Many countries use dot-suffix since the internet was invented. dot-com-dot-suffix has been abandoned by some other countries. Really? I'm behind the curve on that item, even as a voice deep in my mind has been telling me that something weird has been going on, because now that you mention it, it's like I've seen it but haven't acknowledged it.
Hey, thanks for the nod and the insight, I quote the Wikipedia article on the International Date Line: "Crossing the IDL travelling east results in a day or approximately 24 hours being subtracted".
Here's the thing, living on the Pacific Coast of the Americas (Mexico, to be precise), Japan would be to my west, even as a European-style education has drilled into my mind that Japan is to the east. Fun to have a previously shut window of perspective opened ajar, in a gentle manner. Well done, sir!
For example, we continue to teach date formatted in a completely nonsense format (MM/DD/YYYY) instead of either high to low (YYYY/MM/DD) or low to high (DD/MM/YYYY) like the rest of the world.
While the AC got modded "Troll", he/she has got a point, expressed in narrow terms, which I'd like to expand at the risk of being Offtopic: Why is it so difficult to standardize things from place to place?
- Video. The PAL standard is better quality than NTSC (Never The Same Color), so why did the Americas adopt an inferior option? - Voltages. Being asthmatic, my wife took her nebulizer on a recent trip to Europe and within ten seconds busted our converter. We busted another one before ordering a special-delivery converter for medium-sized devices, the whole escapade setting us back about 180 CHF. - Car filters. Working at a company that distributes car stuff, a trip to the warehouse is an eye opener, there's over 1,500 types of just oil filters, the difference between some of them being half a millimeter in circumference. Add windshield wipers (also windshields, for that matter), engine bands, tires (or tyres for all you Britons, cheers mate), fuses, and I wonder why no institution has put an end to this nonsense, like the API (American Petroleum Institute) did with engine oils (BTW, a shining example of standardization success). - Keyboards. Even in Western nations, configurations change however slightly, so that a QWERTY in the USA is a QWERTZ in Switzerland, then another thing in Spain, etc, which tends to REALLY slow down typing speed. - DVDs. Take away the PAL and NTSC thing, and you've still got to deal with the DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD-DL+R, DVD-DL-R, DVD-DD+R, DVD-DL-R, the majority not compatible with all burners, drives and/or players. - Steering wheel/Street flow. Some do it on the left side, some do it on the right side. WHY???
Best comic strip I've read in the last few months is from Spain, shows some exhausted dude being compared to Sisyphus: - "Seven years of toil, but I've finally ripped, subtitled and uploaded all the world's DVDs to the Internet, with cover jpgs and all". Then the guy points a gun to his head as an off-voice says: - "Now stick them all up your ass, 'cause here comes High Definition, Blu-Ray, HDD and whatever the fuck else".
End of rant.
Back on topic, whoever ruled the Seven Seas first, got to do the homework and implement a practical system of navigation, and at the time it was the British, so I have to tip my hat to them, they did a bloody good job at it, as it still stands to the day and really needs no revision. Leave it at Greenwich, or as it's known in time circles, Coordinated Universal Time.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson did a gentleman's job at explaining the concept during a lecture available on the web: - The Greeks named the constellations (while inventing the concept), so we still use the Greek names for them. - The great Islamic culture of a thousand years ago named the visible stars, so we still use the Arab names (Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka, Rigel and Betelgeuse, to name a few just from Orion). FWIW, my favorite star name is the tip of the Big Dipper's handle - Al Kaid, which means "leader of the mourning maidens". - The Brits invented the modern system of correspondence and postage, so their stamp is the only one that does not specify the country of origin, to this day. - The North Americans invented the Internet, so USA websites are dot-com, while the rest of the world uses dot-com-dot-suffix.
All I'm saying is, in a modern world with thousands of pockets of eccentric engineers, it's comforting to find examples of global standardization, and the time zones is one of them.
A young rocket scientist named Wright once traveled much faster than light He set out one day, in a relative way and arrived on the previous night
Instead of going through the hassle of upgrading an Orion Project spaceship, all one has to do is fly conventionally from Honolulu to Tokyo. Now they tell me!
I doubt the remakers will have the balls to finish the series with Patrick McGoohan's grand fuck you
AMC, American Movie Classics, hmmm... Truth is that, by virtue of being unconstrained by many requirements of network TV, cable has become the medium of choice for dark, ballsy and trippy TV series so far. Currently, there's plenty of talent out there making television, which in another age would have been in film, the pioneer at recognizing the medium's potential being David Chase, with "The Rockford Files", "Northern Exposure" and then his polished, cable masterwork "The Sopranos". Then there's "Deadwood", "Dexter", "Battlestar Galactica", "Breaking Bad", etc. I've heard that "The Wire" and "The Shield" belong up there, but I've yet to see any episodes.
As far as finales are concerned, "The Sopranos" rivals and probably bests "The Prisoner" in the "fuck you" department, while "Battlestar Galactica" infuriated many by leaving a whole bunch of weirdness unanswered, such as the glaring matter of Two Earths, one scorched and the other pristine.
So yeah, sure, I'm willing to give this new "The Prisoner" the benefit of a doubt. That said, remember that McGoohan wanted to film only 10 episodes, but the production company told him "no", it had to be 16, so several episodes are, quite noticeably, filler material. This is what happened to Abrams with "Lost" (how many fucking times can you have Kate go off without permission, getting caught then waste two episodes rescuing her?), so that after the third season when his contract expired, he renegotiated the terms to bring down the season total from 25 to 16, making the storyline much leaner and meaner.
Since there's no mention of coordinates in TFA, here's the Google Satellite picture of the closest reference point, China's Dome A. Zoom out one notch at a time, to get an idea of how remote this place is. Since the legend is illegibly white-on-white, I'll point out that the longer, bottom half yardstick at each level begins at 2 km, increases to 5 km, 10 km, 20 km, 50 km, 100 km, 200 km, then inexplicably switches the longer measure to upper half, 200 miles and 500 miles, by which point you can see all of Australia and most of South America.
You're joking, but it helps lead me to a serious point, so thanks. Every remote area I've ever visited, there's always been at least one beer can or water bottle littering the ground, I make it a point to pick it up and bring it back with me for proper disposal, a ritual of mine, leaving a place in a better state than how I found it.
Once, some friends and I were camping in a very remote beach, when suddenly a car caravan of families arrived, setting up camp with a LOUD diesel generator, and the male thirtysomethings proceeded to drink brandy and coke while blasting horrifying pop music with the volume set to 11, even placing a television on a table in the sand, as the wives and children did their thing. As we morbidly witnessed the spectacle while discussing a move to another beach, within a couple of hours the incredible happened, the drunken intruders got into a nasty argument that almost came to blows, then proceeded to hastily pack up and leave, leaving behind of course, empty potato chip bags and the like, which we picked up.
With a profound sense of disbelief and relief, we reckoned this is what happens when instead of leaving the city behind, one drags along as much of it as possible. The "emptiness" of remote nature may be like a psychic mirror, the state of mind you bring is the one that stares back, and in the aforementioned instance, whatever glimpses they got weren't pretty, and surely they didn't even notice what the fuck hit them. Put in a less mystical way, instead of tranquil nature benefiting them, they were unable to see beyond their own chaotic, irritable whirlwind, amplified by a lack of "conveniences" and that pesky sand getting everywhere. Why chaotic? Because they were trying to control too much of their immediate environment, case in point - that damned television in the sand, a potent symbol and symptom if there ever was one.
Whatever the case, having ejected themselves like a wooden splinter, these people should think inwards and learn something these experiences, difficult at best, so failing that, stick to Disneyland, Las Vegas and the like. Want nature? Go to a zoo.
Taxpayers are in no mood to fund that sort of effort.
Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm under the impression that both the police and fire departments have had layoffs as part of the state's budget cuts, in an attempt to keep the government quasi-solvent during its' current financial crisis.
In "The Trap" (or was is "The Century Of Self"?) BBC documentarian Adam Curtis mentions the phenomenon of John Q. Citizen groaning about taxes, electing a man like Reagan as president, then a couple of years later groaning about the decaying conditions of infrastructure, education, law enforcement, etc, not making the connection between his vote and the consequences. Now, instead of going into a diatribe about fickle and myopic masses unable to wisely govern themselves, I'll just state a fact: you get what you pay for, including a weakened firefighting force.
Unfortunately, I know exactly what these people are going through, I get knots in my stomach every time this makes the news. I live in Baja, and during a Santa Ana event on November 23, 1999 (I'll never forget the date, it was a Tuesday), I woke up to the roar of a brush fire in the canyon behind my rented house, even though it was already daylight, the sun was blocked out by smoke and an orange glow danced in darkness through the curtains, a sight I do not wish on anybody. In an instant I bolted out of bed, made way through rooms thick with smoke like a indoor fog, evacuated my crying cats (a mother and five kittens) and ran barefoot through rocks and shrubs to a neighbor's house to phone the fire department, who assured they were on the way.
Here's the thing, a PVC water pipe that feeds the colony runs through the back of the house, and as it's only turned on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays (we're not on the grid), the pipe was dry. This particular morning, it was also charred to a crisp. When the firemen arrived to another house first, the pump was switched on, and as pressurized cold water hit the pipe behind my house, it cracked on top, sending a huge curtain of water upwards, which was then pushed by the wind towards the roof. My gods (BSG, nod nod, wink wink), it was like a waterfall on all four sides! By the time the firemen finally made it to my place, it had already saved itself. The only casualties were my feet (had to use a cane for about a week and a half) and charred whiskers on the mother cat, but we made it through. To this day, there are scars and burns where the flames licked the structure.
Next morning, with a churning stomach I gazed at a huge cloud of smoke rising from the other side of town, so I was baffled to see the previous day's fire truck slowly approach my house. One of the firemen came up and asked if I'd seen his gloves around, as he'd lost them and they were his only pair. Here they were, losing a crucial hour or more, to find a pair of gloves. This is what happens when a vital department is underfunded and undermanned.
Since then I've gotten married, every year we hire someone to clear out a perimeter of at least twenty meters of dry brush and dispose of it. Still, sometimes when the dry winds hit, I do suffer from mild episodes of PTSD, which makes sleeping a real challenge for a few days, until the humidity returns.
Thank you very much for this. I'm saving all three quotes as important reminders of the ever present danger of calcifying as one grows older.
These quotes, however, do not address other situations at local levels. As a citizen of Mexico, there are many things to be concerned... no, dismayed about:
- Kidnapping for ransom, as well as extortion, has reached a historical high and remained there for a decade, and these are just the official numbers, many of these occurrences are not reported. Most of these kidnappings are a side venture by low level drug traffickers, sanctioned by their overlords. - Decapitated bodies popping up in well transited thoroughfares all over, in Tijuana there have even been barrels of acid with semi-dissolved bodies inside, "narco-messages" with atrocious spelling (at least I'm trying to keep it on topic here) pinned to the "trophies", the criminal cartels flaunting their actions and mocking the law. - Closer to home: Several years ago, on the Mexican Independence Day weekend, I heard what sounded like prolonged firecrackers very late at night, and gave it no more thought... until the next day, when the news reported that a nearby ranch was owned by a drug trafficker, and was raided by a rival gang. Seventeen men, women and children were executed by gunfire. - No matter how many of these lowlifes are killed or arrested, a seemingly never ending swarm of barbaric wannabe "Scarfaces" (with a median lifespan of less than thirty years) seem to fill the empty slots. - Meanwhile, the army patrols the highways and streets, stopping and screening us, chipping away at our civil liberties, and the population is so desperate that polls show that the majority of citizens support this.
Is it any wonder that Mexico, along with Pakistan, has been classified as a potentially failed state, one step away from the socio-political status of Somalia? Sadly for Mexico, there is no end in sight, as the only hope is to shift the paradigm and legalize drugs that are not patented by the pharmaceutical industry, yanking the rug from beneath this colossally huge black market economy. But too many people in power have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
So yes, I do see a decaying age, up close and personal, but on a local level and not the way the nearsighted ancients described, so I'd like to conclude with a Garrison Keillor quote: "If the church put in half the time on covetousness that it does on lust, this would be a better world".
1 - Your partner HAS TO be your best friend. Also your accomplice during the good times. When you plan a night out together for dinner or drinks, fuck before you go, you'll both be amazed how much more pleasant a night out is, since you're both relaxed, and you can make a game at how tense everyone else seems. You'll both feel like the smartest, wisest couple in the room.
2 - Drop the adversary or competitive crap.. Honestly, this one baffles me. What's the point? With my wife, I often make mocking allusions to some imaginary, generic cartoon adult that would resort to the "it's complicated" non-explanation to his/her children. I speculate that competitiveness is one of the easiest ways to arrive at that point. Always keeping things as simple as you can is a solid platform for long term happiness.
3 - Drop the "my money" and "your money" bull, it's all your family's money. Sure, I agree, I just wish my wife would see it that way. She doesn't overspend, but often she neglects to inform me about it, so when I need the money and I'm counting on it, to my surprise it's gone. So my side of many an argument tends to be of the "What am I, the goddamn janitor around here?" variety. And that leads to the Communication aspect of a relationship.
4 and 6 - Trust, if you cant trust each other 100% right now then stop (includes Honesty and Respect). May be the single most important factor towards a long term relationship, it's usually sex (past relationships, pr0n) that gets in the way, and some people just can't cope with this one. My wife and I pass the "test of fire" on this one, once she narrated to me in detail about a past sexual encounter of hers (in a train from Paris to Cologne, BTW), and we ended up doing it in the kitchen. I do openly let my eye wander towards asses in front of my wife, and she's cool with it, even participates with me, she knows I regard hidden guilt and lying as such huge energy expenditures that I'm too thrifty (lazy?) to even contemplate it with any seriousness. We also sometimes share my pr0n to add a little extra spice to, sometimes even kick start, intimate proceedings.
5 - You are a complete and utter jerk if you say anything intentionally hurtful to the other person. I just asked my wife if I've ever done this to her, she can't come up with a single instance. She reciprocated the question, and I can't dig up anything from the memory banks. So thankfully this is outside our realm of experience.
Also incalculably helpful, my wife was a latent geek when we met, she's now viewed my Monty Python box sets more times than I have, ends up quoting different stuff than I would, "Scott Of The Sahara" for example, Miss Vanilla Hoare (Carol Cleveland) - "I'm a star! Star, star, star!" We also have the full series of SCTV, Kids In The Hall and Mr Show. She made me very proud recently, finally overcoming her apprehension to watch the Star Wars OT, then a couple of weeks later she did it again! To my utter astonishment, she's also getting hooked into Star Trek, a friend loaned us the first, 1966 season. We're also currently in the middle of Battlestar Galactica.
A word of advice I once received from an older, wiser friend - when a relationship goes bust, it's usually never over one large issue or conflict, but instead an accumulation of small, stupid details, such as leaving one's underwear in the bathroom floor, not leaving the egg-encrusted frying pan soaking in water, etc. The background radiation that can make this toxic is Lack Of Communication, allowing irritation to become resentment, then suddenly you're looking at everything through a magnifying glass, and when things explode, there's no coherent explanation, just a jumbled mess of emotions and an impossibly long list of grievances that seem stupid when looking at them on an individual basis. You have to keep this potential situation constantly defused, every day is Day One.
I could go on and on, so I'll just stop right here.
In the dictionary definition of the terms, yes. However, Kurt Vonnegut came up with an interesting separation of concepts, as viewed through my personal understanding and a hefty dose of editorializing on my part, yet I will refrain from naming any names, I'll leave that parlor game to you:
1. A psychopath cannot tell the difference between right and wrong. Something is wrong with the brain. 2. A sociopath can tell the difference between right and wrong, yet doesn't care. Something is wrong with the heart (to use a metaphor).
With the disclaimer that there's a level of this in all of us, yet a critical threshold is reached when it becomes the constant that defines one's life, here's my general outline on Vonnegut's sociopath:
- Onset unknown to me, probably an incident or environmental circumstance at a young age, creating behavioral patterns that calcified through repetition during formative years. - The behavioral pattern has been grooved in for so long, he/she may be unable to attain a healthy emotional equilibrium and probably never will. - Is driven to such a degree to achieve a goal, however wide (such as a dogma) or narrow (greed), that he/she takes advantage of others' good faith, exploiting then discarding allies, stepping stones all. - Goes through complex mental gymnastics to justify his/her actions, in the subjective narrative is both the hero and the victim. In a word, a narcissist. - Any true introspection may collapse a painstakingly built house of cards, so he/she learns nothing of value when confronted with defeat, achieves virtually no personal growth. Nor in victory, for that matter. - Is by and large a rational person. If placed under psychiatric evaluation, tests results would come back as relatively normal, 'sane'.
The above profile probably fits the description of someone who's wronged you personally. Often tagged as leaders because of their high level of personal drive and absolute sense of certainty, the news are filled with the actions and pronouncements of these damaged individuals. Thriving as predators within the confines of respectable society, Vonnegut's sociopaths are surely the chief source of collateral collective human suffering since the dawn of time.
Get the Taiyo Yuden and MAM-A Gold blanks and you won't have issues like this.
Amen to that. The day I bought my first spindle of Taiyo Yudens was the day I stopped burning coasters, and I've gone through about 200 of them. Too bad TY has not made DVD-R DL or DVD+R DL discs, I've had to use Verbatim for those, and considering they're quite a bit more expensive than regular DVDs, the failure rate is too high; even while burning at 2x, I often get the error message "Verification failed, bad sector something something", using Toast Titanium on an iMac and an external Sony disc burner hooked up via Firewire, as the internal Pioneer burner was an absolute piece of crap.
Back in my college days in the early nineties, I had a debit account to which my parents deposited a modest monthly stipend, you know, student budget for weekday ramen and weekend beers. BTW, this was in Mexico. One day, while using the ATM, I was startled to see a HUGE balance in my account, to the tune of billions or more, I can't remember how much. Of course I went back to the ATM the following day just to check the balance, and it was back to normal. When it happened again the following week, just for the hell of it I withdrew a bit more than I had. Of course, next day my account reflected the negative balance. The huge balance repeated itself a couple more times during the span of a month, then it was gone and never occurred again.
Years later, while casually commenting on this to a couple of friends, one of them said the same thing had happened to her, but her account was in a different bank. For a long time, I've thought that people within the system used the ATM grid to embezzle money, moving it through accounts to cover their tracks. But now I'm starting to suspect it may have just been buggy programming.
They scanned passport cards, not regular passports; presumably, quite a few of the folks carrying them around San Francisco travel to Mexico on a regular basis.
Immigration tightened regulations last year to such extent, that even on one day car trips across the border, either to Mexico or Canada, all US citizens must do so with a valid passport or passport card, any other form of ID is no longer adequate. For air travel, the old-fashioned passport booklet is required. The passport booklet contains a machine-readable strip, while the passport card, which began to be issued last year in tandem with the new immigration regulations, contains the chip.
This article being about the San Francisco wharf, what I'm picturing here are passengers either embarking or disembarking cruise ships with a port of call in Vancouver or Victoria, British Columbia. Most cruise ships to Mexico depart from Long Beach or San Diego, while those headed north all the way to Alaska do so from San Francisco.
Now, the passport card is issued with a sleeve to block the chip from scanning devices, but knowing how most people are unaware and/or unconcerned about tech vulnerabilities, I'm guessing many found the sleeve inconvenient, put it away and placed the card in their wallet, as they would a driver's license, state ID, AAA card, etc, then went along on their merry way.
I'd be very interested to read a follow-up to this article, to see what happens when the scanning device is used in a mall or a bar, because if the results remain constant in residential neighborhoods, malls and bars, then definitely, people are NOT getting the point, which means somebody's not doing their job (making the public aware of the risks).
Don't go to law school. Become a legislator. That's the ONLY way any of this can possibly change.
In the meantime, as a consumer, and provided you still buy music from retail stores, websites such as Amazon or legal download services such as iTunes Store, use this site to make sure you never, ever put another cent into RIAA coffers again. Oh, and spread the word. Feeling pangs of guilt for not supporting your favorite artists, who happen to work for a company under the RIAA's umbrella? Go to their concert and/or buy their merchandise, the RIAA doesn't make a dime off that.
If you're a teacher in Mexico using an old Mac, this is of no interest to you. You don't have Internet access anyway. Nice try though.
Nice try indeed. Harking back approximately two decades, Mexico became the first country in the American continent to begin installing fiber-optic telephone wiring for widespread use, even before the United States. FYI, this happened in Baja California. Nowadays, the majority of Mexicans hooked up to the Internet do so through the telephone monopoly Telmex, Telnor in the Northwestern states (both owned by one of the ten richest men in the world, Carlos Slim). A minority hook up through TV cable services, fewer still via satellite (Starband), usually in remote rural areas where Telmex or Telnor have not arrived yet.
Nationwide, junior high schools in rural areas have adopted a teaching system via satellite known as telesecundaria, which can easily be adapted for Internet access and may have already done so.
Now, if you go to any urban area in Mexico and peruse the secondhand stores with electronics, chances are that you'll bump into an early generation iMac in working condition, and be able to purchase it dirt cheap, as the casual Mexican computer user has only used Windows in his/her entire life, so these things may sit on the shelves for awhile. As anecdotal evidence, a friend with a graphic design business once found and bought three iMac Graphite models in one swoop, a five hundred dollar deal, at one of these stores.
Therefore, if you're a savvy teacher in Mexico, or just plain a Mac user with a penny to pinch and a little luck, Classilla could potentially be a godsend.
You'd be surprised how many people still do. My calculated guess would be that they're angling to rationally disregard that ol' catholic morality indoctrinated during youth. What is it that the Jesuits say? "Give me a man for the first seven years of his life, after that you can have him, you'll never break him".
Although if 'twice a day' helps, all of slashdot should have near perfect DNA.
Now to just find someone to spread it to..
That's one way of looking at it.
Here's another, less obvious one, which I read in a Timothy Leary essay about fifteen years ago: The anatomy contains organs that serve to keep the individual alive, such as heart, lungs, liver, etc. The anatomy also contains organs that serve no purpose in keeping the individual alive, but are focused on the preservation of the species, such as ovaries, whose sole function is to produce the female egg, and the prostate, whose sole function is to secrete a lubricant which aids in ejaculation, a strange little organ. Statistically, it seems these organs are the ones that do us in first, by "virtue" of being the most vulnerable to cancer, the highest rates among females being of the ovarian and breast variety, while the highest among males of the prostate variety.
Could it be that as we gradually cease to use our procreative organs, as we are no longer useful to the natural order of things, nature itself has a mechanism to push us aside?
And so, in inimitable style, Mr Leary, who was dying of prostate cancer then, concluded his musings with the following empirical conclusion and advice for us all: "Use it or lose it!"
As an amusing afterthought, when I mentioned this article to friends, some of them said "So that means I should fuck every day?", while others said "So that means it's okay if I jack off every day?" Caught them with their guard down, spilled the beans all by themselves.
1. Detroit, Mich. - Jobs available: 449
2. Bentonville, Ark. - Jobs available: 81
3. Cleveland, Ohio - Jobs available: 211
4. Syracuse, N.Y. - Jobs available: 49
5. Tie: Boston, Mass., and San Francisco, Calif.
6. Anytown in Alaska - Jobs available: 24
7. Orlando, Fla. - Jobs available: 235
Karma karma karma karma karma ka-karma whore...
It's a service, truth be told. When articles like this one are posted, I always scroll down the thread to see if someone has spared me from slideshow purgatory, so I'm always grateful.
Jeez, whenever I read replies like AC, I can't shake off the image of a joyless, semi-obese yet undernourished teenage kid, reclused in his bedroom most of the time; no matter what's put in front of him, he'll predictably snicker with a hint of bitterness about how lame it is, standout exceptions being a real firearm ("coooool!") and alcohol ("awesome!").
The prototypical anti-geek geek, he's the kind who, by his twenties, has never gotten laid and yells out "Show us your tits!" from within the safety of numbers and a six pack of Bud. This is around the age when he'll become increasingly convinced that "the Jews are to blame for everything". In a nutshell, the political base for the Sarah Palins of tomorrow.
"Ironically, the US has a quirky democratic system as well."
Yep....it's called a "Republic".
Quirky indeed...
:)
Actually, I think the point trying to come across here is that Al Gore won the nationwide popular vote in 2000 by one million ballots, give or take a few, an uncontested number, but an irrelevant one in the presidential outcome, as the Electoral College system in place (the euphemism being "Representative Democracy") allowed for vote fraud to be applied by exploiting the system's weakest spot that year, the state of Florida (a neck-to-neck race, a Bush as governor, Katherine Harris). Add to the equation a 5-4 conservative majority in the Supreme Court and yes indeed, more quirk than most patriotic US citizens would be comfortable admitting. The year 2000 was basically a bloodless putsch in the United States.
The presidential election of 2004 was much more insidious, paperless voting machines skewing results in several states including Florida (again), New Mexico and, decisively Ohio, all in Bush's favor. The manufacturers of the voting machines in question, Diebold and Sequoia, were both major GOP corporate contributors, BTW, and had their machines installed in key Electoral College states under the auspices of a GOP-dominated government.
Finally, let's not overlook, let's never forget, the Gray Davis recall vote in California, where republicans exploited a loophole in the state's electoral system and put into effect a recall ballot with two basic choices: 1) Keep Gray Davis in office 2) Oust Gray Davis from office, and if so, who should replace him? If the results are reconfigured as a straightforward election, Gray Davis (D) got 48% of the vote, Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) around 24%, Cruz Bustamante (D) 18%, Tom McClintock (R) 7%, various others the remaining 3%. Thusly, the GOP inserted itself and the Governator into Sacramento. With 24% of the vote. That said, it must also be added: What the hell was Bustamante thinking? Instead of supporting unity within the democratic party during this flagrant political maneuver/assault, his ego handed the election to the opposition, now look at the state of affairs in California today. "Felicidades, estupido!"
Quirky indeed! Overall, totally FUBAR and compelling evidence of the republican party's totalitarian tendencies, sabotaging the good faith of the country's Democratic mechanisms through sociopathic power grabs.
After Obama's gutting the space budget, honoring Bush's scientific enlightenment is starting to sound like a good idea.
Oh boy, here I go on an offtopic rant, but: Stem cell research, anyone? I don't mean to be facetious and there's nothing I love more than space research and exploration, but there's no comparison here.
Whereas Bush pulled the plug on much scientific activity due to a misguided sense of faith, Obama is trying to be pragmatic about it while being handed an ideology-driven mess of historic proportions. I can't wrap my head around trying to balance the national budget as corrupt and incompetent crony corporations are collapsing and being bailed out, the inherited foreign policy is a bottomless money pit and economists like Paul Krugman are warning that the economic stimulus is too small.
Look at this fucked up graph and ask yourself where does the money come from. This is not Obama doing things that displease me on a gut level, this is Obama dealing with a clusterfuck many of us witnessed with horror during eight eternal years. Add to this the current weak-spined Democrat-led Congress (where much of the national budget is formulated) caving in to demands of a loud minority of ignorant Republicans left over from the electoral massacre of 2008... it doesn't look good, does it, doctor?
Things were FUBAR long before Obama arrived on the scene, give the man time. The silver lining for the NASA debacle (let's face it, a broken system since the waning days of the Apollo project) is that it may rise from the ashes as a faster, leaner and meaner entity, or a new one altogether! Birthing pains, phasing out the bloated old political Space Shuttle (lots of employees, alas), making circumstances flexible enough (finally!) for a flotilla of smaller and cheaper spaceships able to take off and land horizontally, with technology that exists on the shelves (scramjet, etc). Once the painful transition is made, the industry (and employment) will bloom into levels never before seen.
To wrap my rant in a nutshell, I deeply hope that besides pragmatism, Obama also has long term vision here, as opposed to giving priority to the social/political bottom line on a trimester by trimester basis.
Slashdot Mirror
Every keyboard is configured to optimize typing speed in the language or languages of the country it was designed for.
Good deduction but not quite right, the QWERTY system was designed to slow down typing speeds at a time when mechanical hammers tended to jam easily.
According to an old school geek, a better, speedier configuration for a keyboard would be DVORAK.
Many countries use dot-suffix since the internet was invented. dot-com-dot-suffix has been abandoned by some other countries.
Really? I'm behind the curve on that item, even as a voice deep in my mind has been telling me that something weird has been going on, because now that you mention it, it's like I've seen it but haven't acknowledged it.
Hey, thanks for the nod and the insight, I quote the Wikipedia article on the International Date Line:
"Crossing the IDL travelling east results in a day or approximately 24 hours being subtracted".
Here's the thing, living on the Pacific Coast of the Americas (Mexico, to be precise), Japan would be to my west, even as a European-style education has drilled into my mind that Japan is to the east. Fun to have a previously shut window of perspective opened ajar, in a gentle manner. Well done, sir!
For example, we continue to teach date formatted in a completely nonsense format (MM/DD/YYYY) instead of either high to low (YYYY/MM/DD) or low to high (DD/MM/YYYY) like the rest of the world.
While the AC got modded "Troll", he/she has got a point, expressed in narrow terms, which I'd like to expand at the risk of being Offtopic: Why is it so difficult to standardize things from place to place?
- Video. The PAL standard is better quality than NTSC (Never The Same Color), so why did the Americas adopt an inferior option?
- Voltages. Being asthmatic, my wife took her nebulizer on a recent trip to Europe and within ten seconds busted our converter. We busted another one before ordering a special-delivery converter for medium-sized devices, the whole escapade setting us back about 180 CHF.
- Car filters. Working at a company that distributes car stuff, a trip to the warehouse is an eye opener, there's over 1,500 types of just oil filters, the difference between some of them being half a millimeter in circumference. Add windshield wipers (also windshields, for that matter), engine bands, tires (or tyres for all you Britons, cheers mate), fuses, and I wonder why no institution has put an end to this nonsense, like the API (American Petroleum Institute) did with engine oils (BTW, a shining example of standardization success).
- Keyboards. Even in Western nations, configurations change however slightly, so that a QWERTY in the USA is a QWERTZ in Switzerland, then another thing in Spain, etc, which tends to REALLY slow down typing speed.
- DVDs. Take away the PAL and NTSC thing, and you've still got to deal with the DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD-DL+R, DVD-DL-R, DVD-DD+R, DVD-DL-R, the majority not compatible with all burners, drives and/or players.
- Steering wheel/Street flow. Some do it on the left side, some do it on the right side. WHY???
Best comic strip I've read in the last few months is from Spain, shows some exhausted dude being compared to Sisyphus:
- "Seven years of toil, but I've finally ripped, subtitled and uploaded all the world's DVDs to the Internet, with cover jpgs and all".
Then the guy points a gun to his head as an off-voice says:
- "Now stick them all up your ass, 'cause here comes High Definition, Blu-Ray, HDD and whatever the fuck else".
End of rant.
Back on topic, whoever ruled the Seven Seas first, got to do the homework and implement a practical system of navigation, and at the time it was the British, so I have to tip my hat to them, they did a bloody good job at it, as it still stands to the day and really needs no revision. Leave it at Greenwich, or as it's known in time circles, Coordinated Universal Time.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson did a gentleman's job at explaining the concept during a lecture available on the web:
- The Greeks named the constellations (while inventing the concept), so we still use the Greek names for them.
- The great Islamic culture of a thousand years ago named the visible stars, so we still use the Arab names (Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka, Rigel and Betelgeuse, to name a few just from Orion). FWIW, my favorite star name is the tip of the Big Dipper's handle - Al Kaid, which means "leader of the mourning maidens".
- The Brits invented the modern system of correspondence and postage, so their stamp is the only one that does not specify the country of origin, to this day.
- The North Americans invented the Internet, so USA websites are dot-com, while the rest of the world uses dot-com-dot-suffix.
All I'm saying is, in a modern world with thousands of pockets of eccentric engineers, it's comforting to find examples of global standardization, and the time zones is one of them.
Reminds me of that limerick:
A young rocket scientist named Wright
once traveled much faster than light
He set out one day, in a relative way
and arrived on the previous night
Instead of going through the hassle of upgrading an Orion Project spaceship, all one has to do is fly conventionally from Honolulu to Tokyo.
Now they tell me!
I doubt the remakers will have the balls to finish the series with Patrick McGoohan's grand fuck you
AMC, American Movie Classics, hmmm... Truth is that, by virtue of being unconstrained by many requirements of network TV, cable has become the medium of choice for dark, ballsy and trippy TV series so far. Currently, there's plenty of talent out there making television, which in another age would have been in film, the pioneer at recognizing the medium's potential being David Chase, with "The Rockford Files", "Northern Exposure" and then his polished, cable masterwork "The Sopranos". Then there's "Deadwood", "Dexter", "Battlestar Galactica", "Breaking Bad", etc. I've heard that "The Wire" and "The Shield" belong up there, but I've yet to see any episodes.
As far as finales are concerned, "The Sopranos" rivals and probably bests "The Prisoner" in the "fuck you" department, while "Battlestar Galactica" infuriated many by leaving a whole bunch of weirdness unanswered, such as the glaring matter of Two Earths, one scorched and the other pristine.
So yeah, sure, I'm willing to give this new "The Prisoner" the benefit of a doubt. That said, remember that McGoohan wanted to film only 10 episodes, but the production company told him "no", it had to be 16, so several episodes are, quite noticeably, filler material. This is what happened to Abrams with "Lost" (how many fucking times can you have Kate go off without permission, getting caught then waste two episodes rescuing her?), so that after the third season when his contract expired, he renegotiated the terms to bring down the season total from 25 to 16, making the storyline much leaner and meaner.
It's also in the Middle of Nowhere.
Since there's no mention of coordinates in TFA, here's the Google Satellite picture of the closest reference point, China's Dome A. Zoom out one notch at a time, to get an idea of how remote this place is. Since the legend is illegibly white-on-white, I'll point out that the longer, bottom half yardstick at each level begins at 2 km, increases to 5 km, 10 km, 20 km, 50 km, 100 km, 200 km, then inexplicably switches the longer measure to upper half, 200 miles and 500 miles, by which point you can see all of Australia and most of South America.
Yeah, lets all go there and make a huge PAARTY!
You're joking, but it helps lead me to a serious point, so thanks.
Every remote area I've ever visited, there's always been at least one beer can or water bottle littering the ground, I make it a point to pick it up and bring it back with me for proper disposal, a ritual of mine, leaving a place in a better state than how I found it.
Once, some friends and I were camping in a very remote beach, when suddenly a car caravan of families arrived, setting up camp with a LOUD diesel generator, and the male thirtysomethings proceeded to drink brandy and coke while blasting horrifying pop music with the volume set to 11, even placing a television on a table in the sand, as the wives and children did their thing. As we morbidly witnessed the spectacle while discussing a move to another beach, within a couple of hours the incredible happened, the drunken intruders got into a nasty argument that almost came to blows, then proceeded to hastily pack up and leave, leaving behind of course, empty potato chip bags and the like, which we picked up.
With a profound sense of disbelief and relief, we reckoned this is what happens when instead of leaving the city behind, one drags along as much of it as possible.
The "emptiness" of remote nature may be like a psychic mirror, the state of mind you bring is the one that stares back, and in the aforementioned instance, whatever glimpses they got weren't pretty, and surely they didn't even notice what the fuck hit them.
Put in a less mystical way, instead of tranquil nature benefiting them, they were unable to see beyond their own chaotic, irritable whirlwind, amplified by a lack of "conveniences" and that pesky sand getting everywhere. Why chaotic? Because they were trying to control too much of their immediate environment, case in point - that damned television in the sand, a potent symbol and symptom if there ever was one.
Whatever the case, having ejected themselves like a wooden splinter, these people should think inwards and learn something these experiences, difficult at best, so failing that, stick to Disneyland, Las Vegas and the like. Want nature? Go to a zoo.
Taxpayers are in no mood to fund that sort of effort.
Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm under the impression that both the police and fire departments have had layoffs as part of the state's budget cuts, in an attempt to keep the government quasi-solvent during its' current financial crisis.
In "The Trap" (or was is "The Century Of Self"?) BBC documentarian Adam Curtis mentions the phenomenon of John Q. Citizen groaning about taxes, electing a man like Reagan as president, then a couple of years later groaning about the decaying conditions of infrastructure, education, law enforcement, etc, not making the connection between his vote and the consequences. Now, instead of going into a diatribe about fickle and myopic masses unable to wisely govern themselves, I'll just state a fact: you get what you pay for, including a weakened firefighting force.
Unfortunately, I know exactly what these people are going through, I get knots in my stomach every time this makes the news. I live in Baja, and during a Santa Ana event on November 23, 1999 (I'll never forget the date, it was a Tuesday), I woke up to the roar of a brush fire in the canyon behind my rented house, even though it was already daylight, the sun was blocked out by smoke and an orange glow danced in darkness through the curtains, a sight I do not wish on anybody. In an instant I bolted out of bed, made way through rooms thick with smoke like a indoor fog, evacuated my crying cats (a mother and five kittens) and ran barefoot through rocks and shrubs to a neighbor's house to phone the fire department, who assured they were on the way.
Here's the thing, a PVC water pipe that feeds the colony runs through the back of the house, and as it's only turned on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays (we're not on the grid), the pipe was dry. This particular morning, it was also charred to a crisp. When the firemen arrived to another house first, the pump was switched on, and as pressurized cold water hit the pipe behind my house, it cracked on top, sending a huge curtain of water upwards, which was then pushed by the wind towards the roof. My gods (BSG, nod nod, wink wink), it was like a waterfall on all four sides! By the time the firemen finally made it to my place, it had already saved itself. The only casualties were my feet (had to use a cane for about a week and a half) and charred whiskers on the mother cat, but we made it through. To this day, there are scars and burns where the flames licked the structure.
Next morning, with a churning stomach I gazed at a huge cloud of smoke rising from the other side of town, so I was baffled to see the previous day's fire truck slowly approach my house. One of the firemen came up and asked if I'd seen his gloves around, as he'd lost them and they were his only pair. Here they were, losing a crucial hour or more, to find a pair of gloves.
This is what happens when a vital department is underfunded and undermanned.
Since then I've gotten married, every year we hire someone to clear out a perimeter of at least twenty meters of dry brush and dispose of it. Still, sometimes when the dry winds hit, I do suffer from mild episodes of PTSD, which makes sleeping a real challenge for a few days, until the humidity returns.
Thank you very much for this. I'm saving all three quotes as important reminders of the ever present danger of calcifying as one grows older.
These quotes, however, do not address other situations at local levels. As a citizen of Mexico, there are many things to be concerned... no, dismayed about:
- Kidnapping for ransom, as well as extortion, has reached a historical high and remained there for a decade, and these are just the official numbers, many of these occurrences are not reported. Most of these kidnappings are a side venture by low level drug traffickers, sanctioned by their overlords.
- Decapitated bodies popping up in well transited thoroughfares all over, in Tijuana there have even been barrels of acid with semi-dissolved bodies inside, "narco-messages" with atrocious spelling (at least I'm trying to keep it on topic here) pinned to the "trophies", the criminal cartels flaunting their actions and mocking the law.
- Closer to home: Several years ago, on the Mexican Independence Day weekend, I heard what sounded like prolonged firecrackers very late at night, and gave it no more thought... until the next day, when the news reported that a nearby ranch was owned by a drug trafficker, and was raided by a rival gang. Seventeen men, women and children were executed by gunfire.
- No matter how many of these lowlifes are killed or arrested, a seemingly never ending swarm of barbaric wannabe "Scarfaces" (with a median lifespan of less than thirty years) seem to fill the empty slots.
- Meanwhile, the army patrols the highways and streets, stopping and screening us, chipping away at our civil liberties, and the population is so desperate that polls show that the majority of citizens support this.
Is it any wonder that Mexico, along with Pakistan, has been classified as a potentially failed state, one step away from the socio-political status of Somalia?
Sadly for Mexico, there is no end in sight, as the only hope is to shift the paradigm and legalize drugs that are not patented by the pharmaceutical industry, yanking the rug from beneath this colossally huge black market economy. But too many people in power have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
So yes, I do see a decaying age, up close and personal, but on a local level and not the way the nearsighted ancients described, so I'd like to conclude with a Garrison Keillor quote: "If the church put in half the time on covetousness that it does on lust, this would be a better world".
Well done.
1 - Your partner HAS TO be your best friend. Also your accomplice during the good times. When you plan a night out together for dinner or drinks, fuck before you go, you'll both be amazed how much more pleasant a night out is, since you're both relaxed, and you can make a game at how tense everyone else seems. You'll both feel like the smartest, wisest couple in the room.
2 - Drop the adversary or competitive crap.. Honestly, this one baffles me. What's the point? With my wife, I often make mocking allusions to some imaginary, generic cartoon adult that would resort to the "it's complicated" non-explanation to his/her children. I speculate that competitiveness is one of the easiest ways to arrive at that point. Always keeping things as simple as you can is a solid platform for long term happiness.
3 - Drop the "my money" and "your money" bull, it's all your family's money. Sure, I agree, I just wish my wife would see it that way. She doesn't overspend, but often she neglects to inform me about it, so when I need the money and I'm counting on it, to my surprise it's gone. So my side of many an argument tends to be of the "What am I, the goddamn janitor around here?" variety. And that leads to the Communication aspect of a relationship.
4 and 6 - Trust, if you cant trust each other 100% right now then stop (includes Honesty and Respect). May be the single most important factor towards a long term relationship, it's usually sex (past relationships, pr0n) that gets in the way, and some people just can't cope with this one. My wife and I pass the "test of fire" on this one, once she narrated to me in detail about a past sexual encounter of hers (in a train from Paris to Cologne, BTW), and we ended up doing it in the kitchen. I do openly let my eye wander towards asses in front of my wife, and she's cool with it, even participates with me, she knows I regard hidden guilt and lying as such huge energy expenditures that I'm too thrifty (lazy?) to even contemplate it with any seriousness. We also sometimes share my pr0n to add a little extra spice to, sometimes even kick start, intimate proceedings.
5 - You are a complete and utter jerk if you say anything intentionally hurtful to the other person. I just asked my wife if I've ever done this to her, she can't come up with a single instance. She reciprocated the question, and I can't dig up anything from the memory banks. So thankfully this is outside our realm of experience.
Also incalculably helpful, my wife was a latent geek when we met, she's now viewed my Monty Python box sets more times than I have, ends up quoting different stuff than I would, "Scott Of The Sahara" for example, Miss Vanilla Hoare (Carol Cleveland) - "I'm a star! Star, star, star!" We also have the full series of SCTV, Kids In The Hall and Mr Show. She made me very proud recently, finally overcoming her apprehension to watch the Star Wars OT, then a couple of weeks later she did it again! To my utter astonishment, she's also getting hooked into Star Trek, a friend loaned us the first, 1966 season. We're also currently in the middle of Battlestar Galactica.
A word of advice I once received from an older, wiser friend - when a relationship goes bust, it's usually never over one large issue or conflict, but instead an accumulation of small, stupid details, such as leaving one's underwear in the bathroom floor, not leaving the egg-encrusted frying pan soaking in water, etc. The background radiation that can make this toxic is Lack Of Communication, allowing irritation to become resentment, then suddenly you're looking at everything through a magnifying glass, and when things explode, there's no coherent explanation, just a jumbled mess of emotions and an impossibly long list of grievances that seem stupid when looking at them on an individual basis. You have to keep this potential situation constantly defused, every day is Day One.
I could go on and on, so I'll just stop right here.
Psychopathy and sociopathy are synonyms.
In the dictionary definition of the terms, yes.
However, Kurt Vonnegut came up with an interesting separation of concepts, as viewed through my personal understanding and a hefty dose of editorializing on my part, yet I will refrain from naming any names, I'll leave that parlor game to you:
1. A psychopath cannot tell the difference between right and wrong. Something is wrong with the brain.
2. A sociopath can tell the difference between right and wrong, yet doesn't care. Something is wrong with the heart (to use a metaphor).
With the disclaimer that there's a level of this in all of us, yet a critical threshold is reached when it becomes the constant that defines one's life, here's my general outline on Vonnegut's sociopath:
- Onset unknown to me, probably an incident or environmental circumstance at a young age, creating behavioral patterns that calcified through repetition during formative years.
- The behavioral pattern has been grooved in for so long, he/she may be unable to attain a healthy emotional equilibrium and probably never will.
- Is driven to such a degree to achieve a goal, however wide (such as a dogma) or narrow (greed), that he/she takes advantage of others' good faith, exploiting then discarding allies, stepping stones all.
- Goes through complex mental gymnastics to justify his/her actions, in the subjective narrative is both the hero and the victim. In a word, a narcissist.
- Any true introspection may collapse a painstakingly built house of cards, so he/she learns nothing of value when confronted with defeat, achieves virtually no personal growth. Nor in victory, for that matter.
- Is by and large a rational person. If placed under psychiatric evaluation, tests results would come back as relatively normal, 'sane'.
The above profile probably fits the description of someone who's wronged you personally.
Often tagged as leaders because of their high level of personal drive and absolute sense of certainty, the news are filled with the actions and pronouncements of these damaged individuals.
Thriving as predators within the confines of respectable society, Vonnegut's sociopaths are surely the chief source of collateral collective human suffering since the dawn of time.
Yup. Jupiter got served.
aLL THESE WORLD ARE BELONG TO YOU KK, DO NOT WANT EUROPA THX
OK, let's see if I can get this through the lameness filter:
+#353 ///0rldz 4r3 y00rz, xc3p+ 3|_|r0p4. 4++3mpt n0 p0wn4g3 n00bz rotflmao
Get the Taiyo Yuden and MAM-A Gold blanks and you won't have issues like this.
Amen to that. The day I bought my first spindle of Taiyo Yudens was the day I stopped burning coasters, and I've gone through about 200 of them.
Too bad TY has not made DVD-R DL or DVD+R DL discs, I've had to use Verbatim for those, and considering they're quite a bit more expensive than regular DVDs, the failure rate is too high; even while burning at 2x, I often get the error message "Verification failed, bad sector something something", using Toast Titanium on an iMac and an external Sony disc burner hooked up via Firewire, as the internal Pioneer burner was an absolute piece of crap.
Back in my college days in the early nineties, I had a debit account to which my parents deposited a modest monthly stipend, you know, student budget for weekday ramen and weekend beers. BTW, this was in Mexico.
One day, while using the ATM, I was startled to see a HUGE balance in my account, to the tune of billions or more, I can't remember how much. Of course I went back to the ATM the following day just to check the balance, and it was back to normal.
When it happened again the following week, just for the hell of it I withdrew a bit more than I had. Of course, next day my account reflected the negative balance. The huge balance repeated itself a couple more times during the span of a month, then it was gone and never occurred again.
Years later, while casually commenting on this to a couple of friends, one of them said the same thing had happened to her, but her account was in a different bank.
For a long time, I've thought that people within the system used the ATM grid to embezzle money, moving it through accounts to cover their tracks. But now I'm starting to suspect it may have just been buggy programming.
They scanned passport cards, not regular passports; presumably, quite a few of the folks carrying them around San Francisco travel to Mexico on a regular basis.
Immigration tightened regulations last year to such extent, that even on one day car trips across the border, either to Mexico or Canada, all US citizens must do so with a valid passport or passport card, any other form of ID is no longer adequate. For air travel, the old-fashioned passport booklet is required.
The passport booklet contains a machine-readable strip, while the passport card, which began to be issued last year in tandem with the new immigration regulations, contains the chip.
This article being about the San Francisco wharf, what I'm picturing here are passengers either embarking or disembarking cruise ships with a port of call in Vancouver or Victoria, British Columbia. Most cruise ships to Mexico depart from Long Beach or San Diego, while those headed north all the way to Alaska do so from San Francisco.
Now, the passport card is issued with a sleeve to block the chip from scanning devices, but knowing how most people are unaware and/or unconcerned about tech vulnerabilities, I'm guessing many found the sleeve inconvenient, put it away and placed the card in their wallet, as they would a driver's license, state ID, AAA card, etc, then went along on their merry way.
I'd be very interested to read a follow-up to this article, to see what happens when the scanning device is used in a mall or a bar, because if the results remain constant in residential neighborhoods, malls and bars, then definitely, people are NOT getting the point, which means somebody's not doing their job (making the public aware of the risks).
Don't go to law school. Become a legislator. That's the ONLY way any of this can possibly change.
In the meantime, as a consumer, and provided you still buy music from retail stores, websites such as Amazon or legal download services such as iTunes Store, use this site to make sure you never, ever put another cent into RIAA coffers again. Oh, and spread the word.
Feeling pangs of guilt for not supporting your favorite artists, who happen to work for a company under the RIAA's umbrella? Go to their concert and/or buy their merchandise, the RIAA doesn't make a dime off that.
If you're a teacher in Mexico using an old Mac, this is of no interest to you. You don't have Internet access anyway. Nice try though.
Nice try indeed. Harking back approximately two decades, Mexico became the first country in the American continent to begin installing fiber-optic telephone wiring for widespread use, even before the United States. FYI, this happened in Baja California.
Nowadays, the majority of Mexicans hooked up to the Internet do so through the telephone monopoly Telmex, Telnor in the Northwestern states (both owned by one of the ten richest men in the world, Carlos Slim). A minority hook up through TV cable services, fewer still via satellite (Starband), usually in remote rural areas where Telmex or Telnor have not arrived yet.
Nationwide, junior high schools in rural areas have adopted a teaching system via satellite known as telesecundaria, which can easily be adapted for Internet access and may have already done so.
Now, if you go to any urban area in Mexico and peruse the secondhand stores with electronics, chances are that you'll bump into an early generation iMac in working condition, and be able to purchase it dirt cheap, as the casual Mexican computer user has only used Windows in his/her entire life, so these things may sit on the shelves for awhile. As anecdotal evidence, a friend with a graphic design business once found and bought three iMac Graphite models in one swoop, a five hundred dollar deal, at one of these stores.
Therefore, if you're a savvy teacher in Mexico, or just plain a Mac user with a penny to pinch and a little luck, Classilla could potentially be a godsend.
Do they live in the middle ages?
You'd be surprised how many people still do. My calculated guess would be that they're angling to rationally disregard that ol' catholic morality indoctrinated during youth.
What is it that the Jesuits say? "Give me a man for the first seven years of his life, after that you can have him, you'll never break him".
Does masturbation count?
Yes
Mod parent Informative!!!
Although if 'twice a day' helps, all of slashdot should have near perfect DNA.
Now to just find someone to spread it to..
That's one way of looking at it.
Here's another, less obvious one, which I read in a Timothy Leary essay about fifteen years ago:
The anatomy contains organs that serve to keep the individual alive, such as heart, lungs, liver, etc.
The anatomy also contains organs that serve no purpose in keeping the individual alive, but are focused on the preservation of the species, such as ovaries, whose sole function is to produce the female egg, and the prostate, whose sole function is to secrete a lubricant which aids in ejaculation, a strange little organ.
Statistically, it seems these organs are the ones that do us in first, by "virtue" of being the most vulnerable to cancer, the highest rates among females being of the ovarian and breast variety, while the highest among males of the prostate variety.
Could it be that as we gradually cease to use our procreative organs, as we are no longer useful to the natural order of things, nature itself has a mechanism to push us aside?
And so, in inimitable style, Mr Leary, who was dying of prostate cancer then, concluded his musings with the following empirical conclusion and advice for us all: "Use it or lose it!"
As an amusing afterthought, when I mentioned this article to friends, some of them said "So that means I should fuck every day?", while others said "So that means it's okay if I jack off every day?" Caught them with their guard down, spilled the beans all by themselves.
The list for people that don't like slideshows:
1. Detroit, Mich. - Jobs available: 449
2. Bentonville, Ark. - Jobs available: 81
3. Cleveland, Ohio - Jobs available: 211
4. Syracuse, N.Y. - Jobs available: 49
5. Tie: Boston, Mass., and San Francisco, Calif.
6. Anytown in Alaska - Jobs available: 24
7. Orlando, Fla. - Jobs available: 235
Karma karma karma karma karma ka-karma whore...
It's a service, truth be told. When articles like this one are posted, I always scroll down the thread to see if someone has spared me from slideshow purgatory, so I'm always grateful.
Jeez, whenever I read replies like AC, I can't shake off the image of a joyless, semi-obese yet undernourished teenage kid, reclused in his bedroom most of the time; no matter what's put in front of him, he'll predictably snicker with a hint of bitterness about how lame it is, standout exceptions being a real firearm ("coooool!") and alcohol ("awesome!").
The prototypical anti-geek geek, he's the kind who, by his twenties, has never gotten laid and yells out "Show us your tits!" from within the safety of numbers and a six pack of Bud. This is around the age when he'll become increasingly convinced that "the Jews are to blame for everything".
In a nutshell, the political base for the Sarah Palins of tomorrow.
"Ironically, the US has a quirky democratic system as well."
Yep....it's called a "Republic".
Quirky indeed...
Actually, I think the point trying to come across here is that Al Gore won the nationwide popular vote in 2000 by one million ballots, give or take a few, an uncontested number, but an irrelevant one in the presidential outcome, as the Electoral College system in place (the euphemism being "Representative Democracy") allowed for vote fraud to be applied by exploiting the system's weakest spot that year, the state of Florida (a neck-to-neck race, a Bush as governor, Katherine Harris). Add to the equation a 5-4 conservative majority in the Supreme Court and yes indeed, more quirk than most patriotic US citizens would be comfortable admitting. The year 2000 was basically a bloodless putsch in the United States.
The presidential election of 2004 was much more insidious, paperless voting machines skewing results in several states including Florida (again), New Mexico and, decisively Ohio, all in Bush's favor. The manufacturers of the voting machines in question, Diebold and Sequoia, were both major GOP corporate contributors, BTW, and had their machines installed in key Electoral College states under the auspices of a GOP-dominated government.
Finally, let's not overlook, let's never forget, the Gray Davis recall vote in California, where republicans exploited a loophole in the state's electoral system and put into effect a recall ballot with two basic choices: 1) Keep Gray Davis in office 2) Oust Gray Davis from office, and if so, who should replace him?
If the results are reconfigured as a straightforward election, Gray Davis (D) got 48% of the vote, Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) around 24%, Cruz Bustamante (D) 18%, Tom McClintock (R) 7%, various others the remaining 3%. Thusly, the GOP inserted itself and the Governator into Sacramento. With 24% of the vote.
That said, it must also be added: What the hell was Bustamante thinking? Instead of supporting unity within the democratic party during this flagrant political maneuver/assault, his ego handed the election to the opposition, now look at the state of affairs in California today. "Felicidades, estupido!"
Quirky indeed! Overall, totally FUBAR and compelling evidence of the republican party's totalitarian tendencies, sabotaging the good faith of the country's Democratic mechanisms through sociopathic power grabs.
After Obama's gutting the space budget, honoring Bush's scientific enlightenment is starting to sound like a good idea.
Oh boy, here I go on an offtopic rant, but:
Stem cell research, anyone? I don't mean to be facetious and there's nothing I love more than space research and exploration, but there's no comparison here.
Whereas Bush pulled the plug on much scientific activity due to a misguided sense of faith, Obama is trying to be pragmatic about it while being handed an ideology-driven mess of historic proportions. I can't wrap my head around trying to balance the national budget as corrupt and incompetent crony corporations are collapsing and being bailed out, the inherited foreign policy is a bottomless money pit and economists like Paul Krugman are warning that the economic stimulus is too small.
Look at this fucked up graph and ask yourself where does the money come from. This is not Obama doing things that displease me on a gut level, this is Obama dealing with a clusterfuck many of us witnessed with horror during eight eternal years. Add to this the current weak-spined Democrat-led Congress (where much of the national budget is formulated) caving in to demands of a loud minority of ignorant Republicans left over from the electoral massacre of 2008... it doesn't look good, does it, doctor?
Things were FUBAR long before Obama arrived on the scene, give the man time. The silver lining for the NASA debacle (let's face it, a broken system since the waning days of the Apollo project) is that it may rise from the ashes as a faster, leaner and meaner entity, or a new one altogether! Birthing pains, phasing out the bloated old political Space Shuttle (lots of employees, alas), making circumstances flexible enough (finally!) for a flotilla of smaller and cheaper spaceships able to take off and land horizontally, with technology that exists on the shelves (scramjet, etc). Once the painful transition is made, the industry (and employment) will bloom into levels never before seen.
To wrap my rant in a nutshell, I deeply hope that besides pragmatism, Obama also has long term vision here, as opposed to giving priority to the social/political bottom line on a trimester by trimester basis.
By that point, it'll be more like
reallyreallyreallyfuckingheavium(andthistimewereallymeanitforsure)