An ad for "Hypercane" on the History Channel said this:

"A hypercane is basically a super hurricane."

Does anyone else get bothered by such empty sentences as these?
 

You stumble upon a crypt lined with some form of stasis chamber. Assuming you understand how to do both, how do you choose between reviving the chambered and disabling their life support? Our instinctive choice is to revive them, or at least to allow their continued stasis, but if they have been there for hundreds or thousands of years, the difference in immunology may make them immediately susceptible to terrible diseases that would've been super-bugs in their day. Alternatively, they may carry some relatively common disease considered destroyed for aeons: their release could wreak havoc.

Not the cheeriest of morning thoughts; what are your thoughts on the scenario?

The universe is infinite, or seems very near it by our perception, so what matter are our individual actions? To avoid a depressingly nihilistic viewpoint (as opposed to the celebratory viewpoint that we can't screw it up all that badly), we accept some perspective and suppose that our goals should focus on the human scale. In the immediate future, we take this to mean the Earth and its immediate surroundings, potentially out to a distance of Mars, but not for the purposes of this discussion.

Even at such a reduced scale, we observe that there are just shy of seven billion people on this planet and that the actions of national governments, large corporations, and international coalitions dominate the global stage. This mode of thought leads many to question the importance of their personal contribution to environmental, political, and other movements. Such a point of view, however, is inherently flawed, because it is precisely this sort of incremental action that creates the current atmosphere.

We might point out that it is precisely because of individual choices accumulating that there is so much waste in landfills and that so much new technology is bought and scrapped so regularly, among other examples. But many are not convinced of this argument.

More effectively, we can illustrate the cognitive dissonance inherent in supporting some concept theoretically but not putting it into practice oneself. In so doing, we convince those who agree that water resources should not be wasted or that companies should try to curb emissions to reduce their own superfluous use of water and individual vehicular transportation.

Convincing a friend to act on such beliefs, or to vote his or her mind in an election, signifies cultural change. So long as we all ignore our knowledge of what is "right" (e.g. reduction of waste), we can say, "Well, nobody else is doing anything about it personally, why should I sacrifice my comfort?" If, as we realise that little discomfort arises from some of the changes we might implement, we enact our beliefs, our example says to others that not only motivated activists work for things like environmental issues.

As those willing to start this minimal action begin, their peers and communities will take notice and realise that people do care and that all our minute individual contributions add up.


In short, live your credo and lead by example, for actions speak louder than words.

If anyone wants to buy a home in Central Florida, I would like to recommend Mary-Louise from Weichert Realty in Seminole County, Florida. [Disclosure: I am related to this individual.] She is incredibly personable and will work with you to make your dreams come true. Her genuine concern for your interests will help to make you instantly more comfortable during the course of this process.

Trampoline's SONAR Platform does not directly claim to point to fraud or any other particular risk in an email system, but focuses instead on "analys[ing] data in these systems to build a map of social networks, information flows, expertise and individuals' interests throughout the enterprise" (Trampoline Systems - Products). The system, however, theoretically clusters messages by topic and allows users to traverse the network in realtime. That is to say, a user may select a given email address and see connected addresses displayed surrounding the node. A user may then further populate the network by selecting any of the surrounding nodes to include its connexions in the graph. This technique builds connexions solely on overall connectivity--a message sent in either direction between two nodes is "+1 connection strength"--and includes no directionality in the connexions. This means that we cannot determine the dominant source of communication in any relationship. Consider, for example, the "Secretary in Charge of Mass Emails," who may send many emails to many people while predominantly receiving responses from his boss or coworkers and not general employees, with whom he more often communicates. Finally, the Trampoline system also does not seem to screen forwarded emails, though I did not find spam during my exploration of this tool.

( Enronic and SNA )

"In our sex-stupefied, anti-intellectual culture, the eros of souls has become the love that dares not speak its name."

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su07/love-deresiewicz.html

Dear Government of the United States of America,

A few months ago I posted a letter suggesting that we use patriotism and the compulsive contributions of some of those online to scan recent satellite images to aid in the identification of terrorist (and other) threats. (http://scarythedave.livejournal.com/28052.html)

Now another WIRED article inspires another suggestion: rather than relying on dedication and obsession as motivators--and avoiding the obvious money--we should mimick the ideas of Luis von Ahn. Von Ahn has already received a genius grant and provided a number of useful tools and games to the world (cf. Captcha, Babble, etc). Apparently the Department of Homeland Security has even requested that he create a game for DHS staff to aid in the identification of security threats at airports. (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/15-07/ff_humancomp)

The point is this: why not apply these ideas to create games that identify potential threats. Begin with a database of images containing known threats and nonevents alike. Users can react to this database, tagging to the best of their ability and gaining credibility with each accurate identification. This method can at least provide an initial proof of concept and potentially act as a training ground as well.

I hope that these ideas gain support, though I somehow doubt any government official will ever read this letter.

Sincerely,
David M Howcroft
Ramsey Scholar & Concerned Citizen

Head to this page from ytmnd to read about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I meant to write a real post, do some journaling to collect my thoughts, and produce a to-do list.

Instead, the following: today I finished "The Man who Counted." It is a fantastic book. This review reads as though a third-grader wrote it. Still, read the book; it's great.

Well, despite the fact that you're the class of 07, I wanted to congratulate you all on making it this far--all you've got left are a few exams, and after the whole IB process how bad can those be, right?

Heh, seriously, though, I wish you the best of luck as you prepare for and take your IB (and AP) exams.

I'll be back in a little over a week, so give me a call if you want to hang out or need help preparing for any of your exams (I never did Chem, Spanish, or Psych, so I'm no good to any of those types).

If you're seeing this on Facebook, tell the rest of SHS IB '07 to hurry up and get on Facebook (and to friend me).

Ganbatte ne!
~Dave of the Scary

Please go to the i4everyone website (http://www.i4everyone.com/2007/03/19/system-i-stands-for/) and vote for my video. Feel free to view the others and vote for them fairly, but I'd appreciate your support. (Only videos with the "A Star is Born" button next to them are my competition.)

That's all for now; full update to come.

Elementary school kids have sex and are arrested for it.

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=f163c67b-3a90-470e-8168-2fef4a368986&k=74637
http://wjz.com/topstories/topstories_story_089160831.html
http://www.wpbf.com/news/11469840/detail.html

http://news.livejournal.com/97749.html

EDIT: Adding list of sites as discovered to have April Fools' pages.
http://xkcd.com/ (added 12 29)

Dearest Government of the United States of America,

I am a student at the University of Georgia studying linguistics and various aspects of computer science. I am an honors student at this institution and thoroughly involved. (This bears little relevance to my suggestion, but at least gives you some idea of who I am.)

My inspiration--this (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/start.html?pg=10) article from Wired. The article makes jest that internet users can take advantage of Google Earth to investigate critical areas of the world, particularly the border region of Pakistan to search for bin Laden.

My proposal--the government should commission regular efforts to satellite image regions where bin Laden or other threats may be in hiding. Increased scrutiny will make it difficult for enemies to remain in hiding, and unpredictable timing of photography would keep them guessing. More importantly, the government can take advantage of patriotic sentiments and the same online culture that inspires intense productivity on Wikipedia by encouraging citizens and volunteers in general to scour images based on particular search criteria. The government would provide basic lessons/information regarding photo interpretation on a website and, on the same site, provide the latest images for perusal. Registration restrictions would be possible--perhaps require that only US citizens can apply and require that they apply through some physical office such as the DMV so that visual confirmation of identity/citizenship could be used as well. Hence, confirmed US citizens, unlikely to use the images against our nation, could help directly in the fight against terrorism.

Collaborative efforts like this are the quintessential source of power online: the US government should take advantage of modern technologies.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
David M Howcroft
Ramsey Scholar & Concerned Citizen

Postscript: Such an exercise could also be billed as an effort to speed up troop reductions--if citizens at home can help the government with war efforts in Iraq or elsewhere, war objectors will want to contribute as well as supporters of the war out of their devotion to the cause. Obviously we would not want to provide images that reveal too much detail of our own troop locations, but citizens could help in searches of lower priority areas of crucial importance where a lack of manpower limits current efforts. This would be a fantastic political move, as well as a potentially effective military contribution.

I'm sure most of you already know about this, but check the games of economics and politics.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6324357.stm

I don't like the fact that our troops and Iraqi citizens are dying daily in Iraq. I don't even like that terrorists are dying, though that is their choice (it's a waste of life: there's so much out there for them to enjoy if they tried; their energies would be better invested elsewhere).

Even so, I disagree more with those demanding immediate withdrawal of our troops than with the President's plan to send in more troops to help bring stability (a plan supported, apparently, by leaders on the ground in Iraq). I don't want people to lose life unnecessarily, but I feel that is why our troops must stay until we can at least stabilize the area. If we pull out, the Iraqi government, military, police may do some good, but I am concerned that centuries of cultural conflict may result in a civil war that only rebottle the discontent with its eventual resolution.

My ideal solution would be to stabilize the area, encouraging an atmosphere of tolerance, and granting distinct cultural regions their own autonomy (nation-states), while some more diverse areas may remain inter-national and -cultural with some form of neutral governance (probably by committee and consensus of the member nation-states).

That's all for now.

(The article that prompted this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6255151.stm)

So let's find each other:
http://www.lost.eu/fc1a

It's got a bit of a six degrees vibe, like 100 million spiders or whatever that site is, but doesn't require personal information to play. It's pretty cool, really, so you should go ahead and register ^^

Who am I?

(Feel free to respond anonymously and give me the truth.)

Just got a response from Mrs Klein regarding the following image.



The message read:

"That was a great picture! What, is the MLA branching out?
Probably spend so much time sitting on their #@$&*es making
up rules to madden the educated that they wore out their
old furniture! Thanks for the giggle."

I hope she doesn't take offense that I shared this with all of you, but I hoped that the giggles could be shared.