Anyways. I am not planning on making any sort of political point here, I just find this funny. Very recently I’ve started reading the news from cnn.com, and I usually skip over titles of articles that seem really uninteresting/unimportant. But when I saw one the other day about the prime minister of Canada visiting the white house I was really curious what sort of things they would talk about, so I checked it out. From http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/02/01/us.canada/index.html

“Harper and Obama will discuss the bilateral relationship between the North American neighbors and key global issues, according to a White House statement Tuesday.”

Sooooo I laughed for a bit, and then remembered that you can find all of the white house statements on it’s website. So for a little more detail, here is the white house’s statement, in its entirety.

“President Obama will welcome Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada to the White House on Friday, February 4. The two leaders will discuss our important bilateral relationship and key global issues.”

Slightly less conventional literature: The infinity plus one document, or “How to Join the Hidden Brotherhood and Enjoy a Wonderful New Life of Money, Friends, and Power”. It’s presented as a collection of 27 writings, in non-linear novel format, allegedly typed up by Rev. Doktor Christopher J. Staley from a “shaggy mass of papers scattered with scrawls and doodles stuffed into a manilla envelope” that he received by mail from a man named Griston Reeves who he met while drunk in a restaurant called Big Roy’s Eggy Wegg. It’s trippy, sometimes unsettling stuff, but very well written. It’s long, but I would recommend it as well. This one i found online, and you can find it here. there’s no contents page, so you’ll have to substitute chapter numbers in the url yourself.

This post means that the last three are mine. Someone else write something! I am still trying to moderate comments from time to time. new spam quote! “What blog platform are you using? I’ve been looking for a new one, and this seems much cleaner then wordpress.”

I’ve been tinkering with freenet recently- not the internet service in town (”it’s not really free”) but a network designed for complete anonymity. the concept, as well as i understand it, is that every computer with access to it runs a node, which stores a certain amount of information (websites, media files, all sorts of things) encrypted on the hard drive. When someone wants to add something to the network, it’s “injected,” and stored on many computers. When they want to retrieve it, it’s searched for (by it’s decryption key) on the decentralized network. The encryption uses public and private keys, so that once something is posted, anybody can read it and verify which user posted it (if they want that to be known) but ideally it’s impossible to identify what real person corresponds to which user.

for people in countries with more oppressive governments, it’s been used as a communications network, or as a way to secretly mirror websites that their access to is blocked. It’s been used as a way to host animal and earth liberation front texts. and it’s also been used for hosting even more questionable materials, such as child porn, and countless guides on how to create explosives, poison people, and coordinate arson using timed devices. But I like it. the incredible search process and the paranoid encryption involved in any network request makes even css difficult, forums nearly impossible, and embedded flash absolutely out of the question. every page is reduced to a simple ’90s-esque style. most pages you find have been abandoned in the last few years, but if you look for a while you might find one that’s still active.

Anyways, privacy blah blah blah no government monitoring blah blah blah pretty sweet. If anybody posts anything up on it, let me know (in person or encrypted of course!)

I was in Savannah, GA a ways back, and in the hotel room there was a small book about the city. The section that caught my attention, oddly enough, was about religion. It discussed the general religious history of savannah, showed some pictures of pretty churches, and then talked a little about the wide variety of religious beliefs present there today. Apparently, all sorts of religions are present in Savannah today, christianity of course in its many varied forms, judaism, islam, and “even paganism.” Which was all fine. Then the last line went, from memory, something like this: “No matter what your faith, you are welcome in savannah, as long as you believe in something.”

Dear Savannah Tourism Commission, way to completely screw up what was supposed to be an inclusive statement.

“Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society.”

Thank you for that, Pope Benedict XVI.

It certainly seems so.

The recent halt to unemployment benefits has left 400,000 Americans  without income. That means 400,000 will be unable to afford the basic neccessities. WAY TO GO BUNNING!  Additionally, 7 states have been hit especially hard.

And guess what? Heeeeeeeeeeee is back! Thats right, Senator Bunning is back on the floor holding up the passage of the bill again, hopefully this time he won’t last.

The solution is obvious, get Bunning to leave the room. THAT IS ALL THEY HAVE TO DO. Bunning just has to leave to pee and bang we have unemployment benefits.

The worst part is that the Democrats talked the talk threatening to stay on the floor till the bill is passed. But Bunning call them on their bluff and the DEMOCRATS ended the session. THEY JUST GAVE UP. Its time for the Democrats to stop just talking and start walking. Not just on unemployment benefits, but in general. They must stop compromising and start doing.

Apparently, members of Congress have staged an intervention to help Bunning with his obsessive need to object.

I believe that eventually Bunning will stop and it will be renewed. But why did this even happen? We shouldn’t be debating on whether or not to leave Americans with out income. It should be so simple. The good news is that Senator Bunning is retiring at the end of his term. Probably a good idea because I doubt he would get reelected, since 3,181 of his constituents just lost their benefits.

Here are some articles

http://www.csmonitor.com/Money/new-economy/2010/0302/Seven-states-hit-hard-by-Jim-Bunning-s-delay-on-unemployment-benefits

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/400000-will-lose-jobless-benefits-next-week/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/02/AR2010030201150.html?hpid=topnews

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/02/jobless.benefits.bill/?hpt=T2

FIND OUT HOW IT EFFECTED YOUR STATE

http://www.nelp.org/page/-/UI/march.PR.chart.pdf?nocdn=1

AND TO TAKE A STAND

http://www.ombwatch.org/node/10802

First, Mr. Beck makes an important mistake in his speech; He refers to all progressives as communists. Guess what Glenn? When Republicans ended slavery it was considered progressive, so does that mean that the beloved Republican icon Abe Lincoln was a communist? I think not!

This assumption is a faulty one and because he likens all progressives to communists he flaunts his own shortcomings as a thinking human being.

Mr. Beck also claims that the sole difference between a revolution and an evolution is that “one requires a gun.” At face value Mr. Beck’s arguments seems valid. Generally revolutions are violent and do involve armaments of some kind, but this definition is simple. Revolutions are radical and sudden shifts in power and ideology of government. Evolution on the other hand is what democracy is supposed to do. The constitution was written to be a pliable document, something that will change as needed to serve each generation. If anything our Founding Father’s condoned progressivism and evolution in government.

Mr. Beck also uses a Roosevelt quote where Roosevelt argues that we should only tax or take property for the good of the community. What wrong with that? The Constitution says provide for the general welfare, defense, etc. Those things don’t come cheap. Beck also goes on to claim that it is anti-founding fathers. But remember that the Founding Fathers granted the right to tax because it is a necessity for a government to function.

Mr. Beck proceeds to trash the government for a spiraling debt and incredibly high taxes. Mr. Beck is right we should be addressing these problems. But we must first recover from this economic crisis. Secondly, we must be willing to be taxed; the answer to the deficit isn’t to cut all programs. It is to cut the bad ones, stop adding unnecessary ones, and tax to gain revenue. The problem is the current system needs reform. We need to be progressive in how we handle finances and government.

One of the greatest examples of Mr. Beck’s flawed logic is that he attributes his knowledge and success to reading books at the public library. First, libraries are not free they are paid for via taxes. Secondly, libraries are about sharing things collectively as a community, which is one of the most pure and central tenets of communist philosophy. Put simply all communism is kindergarten gone global.

Beck goes on to oversimplify the Constitution, where he claims that “the only job of the United States government is to save us from bad guys.” Sure provide for the common defense is there. But what about providing for the general welfare? Maybe Glenn skipped that line. Furthermore, The Constitution allows for the federal regulations of interstate commerce, that is tantamount to encouraging the government to do something. Also, the “small government” rhetoric that Mr. Beck uses has been tried; it was called the Articles of Confederation and it failed. The Founding Father’s tried to maintain a small federal government, but it was a disaster. The government could not raise money, inflation skyrocketed, and it created piecemeal state policies because the federal government did not have the authority to act uniformly. That is why the same Founding Fathers came together and drafted the current Constitution, which created stronger and larger federal government.

Mr. Beck then proceeds to dedicate a large portion of his speech to trashing Woodrow Wilson. He attacks him for the Fed, for the income tax, and for taking us into WW1. With the Fed, there are legitimate concerns as to its purpose and it warrants reforms, but Mr. Beck fails to provide any. The income tax is not bad, and I will get to that below. And WW1, we had to fight after the German’s policy of unrestricted submarine warfare killed 159 Americans. Mr. Beck says that government should be responsive to the people, Wilson was simply doing what the American people demanded: War.

Mr. Beck then proceeds to attribute the Great Depression to Hoover’s reign of unchecked spending. But that is not true. Hoover was a classic fiscal conservative. He cut taxes but he cut them so much that we had a deficit because revenues were so low. Hoover then failed to act when the economy crashed, making it much worse.

But on top of Beck’s logical fallacies, the progressive movement brought about many important changes that are fundamentally important to America’s democracy.

1. Graduated Income Tax- Yeah I know taxes are “bad”, but it is because of this tax that government works. It also is the fairest tax imaginable, the rich have more money so they can spare the most. People who are poor can’t spare a lot, so the government takes as little as possible.

2. The Roosevelt Administration passed laws that placed minimum standards on the quality of the food we eat, specifically in the meat packing industry. If you want to know more I recommend Upton Sinclair’s”The Jungle”.

3. Roosevelt “busted” trusts to free up markets so that we would have actual free market competition.

4. Pendleton Act- Mandated that 10% of federal offices be given on merit not political connections, a major step forward

5. National Parks

6. Campaign Finance Reform- These laws were recently overturned by the Supreme Court, but were the first laws to attack political corruption

7. Under Wilson, who Beck claims to hate, we passed child labor laws. Who can say now that was a bad idea?

I recommend people go to the following websites:

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978060978&grpId=3659174697241980 for the text of Glenn Beck’s speech.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GreatDepression.html for info Hoover’s economic policies

http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Preamble because you should probably at least peruse it.

I also recommend taking a US History class.

Let’s start with the present: We are wasting resources at an alarming rate. Between our gas guzzling automobiles, extensive light use, and obsession with having the most “stuff” I can safely assume that in 50 years we’re going to wish that we had saved up some of our resources for later. I’m personally taking this year to be greener. Live greener. This Earth is a gift. Life is a gift and here we are spitting on our presents. It’s like that bratty child that looks at a doll in disdain on Christmas and says, “Mommy, I wanted the blonde one.” There are many things that we could do. In fact, the market is indeed cashing in on our new-found consumption awareness (which strangely enough sounds rather oxymoronic). Clorox has come out with “Green Works” products, paper companies are advertising the percentage of recycled materials that go into their goods, it is now en vogue to keep your vegetable garden and wear soy panties. But not enough of us are getting the picture.

It is projected: that the Earth’s population is growing exponentially. Something like 370,000 babies are born every day. Now, I’m not in favor of necessarily supporting the Chinese census limitation of families, but that’s a lot of new people in the world every single day. Just think of how many of those children grow up without homes or enough food. It’s alarming. It takes about three days to accumulate 1,000,000 people. I’m not mathematician but I know enough about numbers to figure that about every month there are 1,000,000,000 new people in the world. Let’s multiply that number by 12 and start counting the number of years it takes to get to 20 billion, huh?

What does that mean? It means major food shortages. Not everyone owns actual land anymore. There isn’t enough of it. And those that do are most likely commercial vendors. I would have to do more research on this, but I can’t imagine the staggering ratio of farmland to city land at this point in time. It’s not glamorous to farm, I get that. But it’s necessary.

On “Earth 2100″ it said that if the rest of the world consumed as much meat as the average American we could exterminate all the cattle in the world rather quickly. I just read on http://www.greenissexy.org that animals are farmed and force fed in certain circumstances in order to be considered delicacies– and that’s only for the part of the body that will be cooked. Foie gras was the meal item in question. Duck livers. Check out the article.

This is probably the least educational place to get the numbers, the double-checked facts, and the expertise on things like post-apocalyptic Earth but I wanted to write about my concerns. Our fuel is running out. Our food is bound to run out. Our water supplies will stagger to devastating lows. Your children, my children, our grandchildren are going to inherit a naked Earth, badly abused. We could revert back into hunters and gatherers, or out of human greed, cannibalism. We could become scavengers. We could forsake all the things we know about right and wrong, intrinsic human values, and give into the eat, sleep, reproduce mindset that we forsook eras ago. Does that scare you? It scares me.

What can we do? We can recycle. treehugger.com went into a rather detailed explanation about what it takes to both make and recycle paper products and the nitty-gritty composition of plastic bags. We can look for other energy sources– at least our governments can, but they seem convinced that off-shore drilling is the answer. We could use solar panels, support companies using wind energy, buy all natural products, and grow our own vegetable gardens. There are simple solutions (save the finding new energy sources, I can imagine that would be rather difficult in larger scenarios) that aren’t being taken advantage of.

I wonder if this is the panic that the apostles felt when they witnessed Jesus’ resurrection. This absolute need to tell people that the here and now matters, that what you do in this life has direct consequences (maybe in this case, not your soul and eternal being, but definitely on future generations), and that something has to change.

(Just a note here: I will probably edit this as I do more research and add on to it, but don’t hesitate to add your own opinions and knowledge. Know that this post is not necessarily complete.)

I like to think of learning words this way: if the new word in question adds more meaning, and is not simply a synonym, then it is worth learning. Some words are worth more than others. The words I enjoy learning the most, are the ones with the most specific meanings. For example, let’s pretend I want to say “this hardy and delicious early-morning breakfast  is very satisfying.” There are multiple meanings that I conveyed in the sentence. One meaning is the time “early morning.” Another meaning is the type of meal “breakfast.” Breakfast implies “morning” but it doesn’t imply “early;” it is a non-specific time. Let’s say there is a hypothetical word that means “early breakfast.” If there was, I would use it because I could then eliminate “early morning” and shorten the sentence. Let’s say there is a hypothetical word for “hardy, delicious, early breakfast.” I could further shorten the sentence, without taking away meaning by using that word. We can be even more concise! Now let’s think about a hypothetical verb that encapsulates the entire meaning of that sentence. The verb is ONLY used to express satisfaction for a hardy, delicious, early-morning breakfast. This word might feel neglected because it doesn’t come up very often, but when it does, it is the BEST word for the situation, hands down. The most specific wins.

Now I’ll switch from hypotheticals to realism. Imagine I am explaining an area in the forrest that was bulldozed. I might say “they bulldozed an area of the forrest.” The word “area” works fine, but it is generic. In the case that I brought up, it would be more fitting to use “swath.” Saying “swath” implies that I am talking about a patch of land, plus, it refers to not just any old shape, but usually a long stretch of land (bonus!), and it usually refers to a stretch of land that has been mown or cut (double-bonus!). The replacement of “area” with “swath,” in this case, actually adds meaning to the idea I am trying to convey.

Hooray for specific words!

Imagine Jo Plumber, getting on her computer, and opening a piece of software for the first time. Let’s imagine she is using a client to collaborate with other people online. The client is an online text editor, an email client, and a file manager. She is greeted with an unfamiliar interface, because she has never seen this software before. Jo, however, is a smart gal, and will figure things out eventually. Let’s observe what happens.

holy cow!

Because the software engineers who made the client planned ahead and knew that people would use this particular client for many different things, they included many features. They wanted Jo to know about all the features, so they gave each feature a button in the window, and made sure the client would display them to Jo. They also expanded all the panes they could think of displayed all the navigation. How does Jo feel about this? Jo sees nothing but clutter. Everything is new, and the immediate goal is not to use all the features, but to familiarize herself to the software. What is the best way to do this? Take it in parts. As I said before, Jo is smart, and knows how to handle this situation. She starts by completely destroying the window. She searches for all the view options, and turns everything off that can be turned off. She simplifies until it can be simplified no further.

much better

Great, it only took 10 minutes to find out how to hide all that clutter. Now that Jo is down to the basics, she is ready to begin exploring her options. She wants to write an email to her friend, Hockey Dad, so she searches the long list of options for something resembling email. MailBox looks like a good choice. She clicks it. It opens a new window that contains an email inbox. It looks cluttered, and once again, she steps through the process of elimination to simplify the email window.

Jo has the right idea. Software seems to work best when it starts simplified, and lets the user add to it as they get to know it better. There are many benefits to starting simple. First, the typical user is not Jo, and would not be able to calmly navigate through a complex piece of software. Jo, someone who knew what she was doing, still had to spend time manually simplifying the software to suite her needs. Second, initial complexity can lead to terrible, redundant, buttons. Let’s take a look at the initial window that Jo saw again. Here is a snippet of the window: the top button bar.

look at all those pretty buttons

Now let’s take a look at a snippet from the sidebar:

(and that's only half of the sidebar)

…and finally, here’s a snippet from the main panel of the window:

Now, go back, look at the pictures of the main panel, sidebar, and button bar, and try to find the “help” button. Did you find it? In how many places? THREE. Yes, there are THREE help buttons. Not only is this redundant, cluttered, bad design in general, this is exceptionally bad design on a Mac, considering that all programs have a “help” menubar item by default. ONE help button is too many. In case you need a little extra HELP, I highlighted all the occurrences in this illustration.

The first time someone uses software, their goal is usually to learn how to use the piece of software. The software could help them with this goal, by starting off simple. As the user gains more experience, they will want more uses. Every time they use it, they may want it to be slightly more complex. Software companies could include options to turn on more complex features after the initial startup, but interfaces in the beginning are best kept to a minimum.

Are you listening, FirstClass?