Month: October 2006

I have to practice this one, It looks pretty impressive.

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=20026

The odds of anyone checking the news before they check here are slim, but just in case anyone might freak:

The plane crash in NYC has been determined to be an accident and NOT a terrorist attack. If you’re asking “What plane crash,” it’s probably a good thing that you read this message before the headlines that the media’s spitting out (New York City Skyline in Flames Again).

A very small plane crashed into a building in NYC today. There are two fatalities. Officials say they have no cause to believe this was any more than an accident.

I couldn’t understand why Google would rush to spend $1.65B on YouTube. Sure, the site is wildly popular, but why the haste to gobble up the video technology and traffic? Then, this morning, I came across the true power of YouTube.

http://e-democracy.org/edebatemn06/?cat=19

The MN 2006 gubernatorial debates are being held online and powered by YouTube via the “MN Gubernatorial E-Debate 2006.”

In early 2003, when I started becoming involved in politics, I joined a Yahoo! group called ‘MN-POLITICS-ANNOUNCE’. Each day a MN political and legislative roundup was collected and sent in a daily email. It was produced by E-Democracy.Org, which I thought was a national nonprofit but came to learn it was a MN-based shop started in 1994. E-Democracy.Org claims to have created the world’s first election-oriented web site.

The past three years have seen an improved use of technology for increasing the quality of info collection and the presentation of the E-Democracy.Org data. Then I saw the debates this morning. The candidates you see are not 5th-party jokers. They are the real deal. To this point, Governor Pawlenty is still being touted as a potential GOP Presidential 2008 runner.

It’s pretty amazing to read, see and hear opening statements, answers to short questions and long rebuttals to other candidates. What makes this site even more amazing is that the Dem. And Rep. candidates shunned historically popular debate venues this year due to lack of agreement on debate rules. For anyone in the state who claims that 30-second TV ads aren’t intelligent, and that the local media is either biased or curt with reporting, then here are the issues and candidates in a broad and full stage, uncensored, direct and without truncation. And the Independence endorsee, Peter Hutchinson, is giving his opening statement using a mounted vidcam while standing in front of a bison.

Is it possible for barnson.org to have a RSS feed? My new Yahoo Mail Beta only supports RSS, not XML feeds.

Just asking Weed

I’ll throw one out for the MBAs in the hizzou:

On the Tuesday Morning Quarterback blog on ESPN, Gregg Easterbrook writes a column about the weekend’s NFL action as well as other random topics. This week’s blog has two points I think we all would enjoy:

1) There’s the story of former CEO of HP, who stepped down amidst allegations she hired PIs to find a leak on the HP board. Who cares? Well, the PIs called the phone company, gave personal information claiming to be members of the board to get phone records, and then used that info to determine who was the leaker. Problem is, this is against the law. So now she had to step down and may also face legal action.

Well, her story is she’s claiming she’s being unfairly branded as a publicity seeker. She claims this in her new book. Written about herself. With her picture all over the cover. That’s the way to prove you don’t want publicity, eh?

And she also claims she was treated unfairly at HP. Her severance package was 21 MILLION AMERICAN DOLLARS!!!. She made 36 million for her 5 years of work!!! Can I be treated unfairly? Please? PLEASE???!!!

2) There’s a “classical” economics experiment where two people are in a room. A third party walks in with $1000, and states the rules: Person A gets to decide how to split the money between Persons A & B. Person B gets to decide whether or not to accept it (Deal or no deal?). If B decided not to accept, no one gets anything.

Well, “classical” economics tell us the logical way for the deal to go down is for A to offer himself $999 and offer B $1. Logic tells us B should accept, because if he does, he gets $1, otherwise he gets zippy.

Well, as you can imagine, results from real people differ slightly. You have to get up to about $300 before B thinks about accepting. “Classical” economists tell us this prove humans are illogical.

Mr. Easterbrook claims a different take. It just proves money isn’t everything, and B would rather lose money than feel like a chump for getting the short end of the stick. Also, A is a fool for proposing such a lopsided split that will almost always be denied.

This can be expanded to a world view in that if both parties in a negotiating situation negotiate keeping the other’s interest in mind, the negotiations go much better. Basically, the basis of civilization is when we can start to take other’s consideration into account when we negotiate.

Just thought you’d find the article interesting, and see if anyone else had any thoughts

My $.02 Weed

Yup.. I know better.. never open an unsolicited attachment. yet there I was, mouse hovering over the attachment.. one click.. then.. no.

I thought it out.. and sure enough it was phony. Bet you ten to one the attachment was a virus. Glad I skipped the second click.. here’s their message.

Dear Customer,

Thank you for ordering from our internet shop. If you paid with a credit card, the charge on your statement will be from name of our shop.

This email is to confirm the receipt of your order. Please do not reply as this email was sent from our automated confirmation system.

Date : 08 Oct 2006 – 12:40 Order ID : ######## (removed)

Payment by Credit card

Product : Quantity : Price WJM-PSP – Sony VAIO SZ370 C2D T7200 : 1 : 2,449.99

Subtotal : 2,449.99 Shipping : 32.88 TOTAL : 2,482.87

Your Order Summary located in the attachment file ( self-extracting archive with “37679041.pdf” file ).

PDF (Portable Document Format) files are created by Adobe Acrobat software and can be viewed with Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not already have this viewer configured on a local drive, you may download it for free from Adobe’s Web site.

We will ship your order from the warehouse nearest to you that has your items in stock (NY, TN, UT & CA). We strive to ship all orders the same day, but please allow 24hrs for processing.

You will receive another email with tracking information soon.

We hope you enjoy your order! Thank you for shopping with us!

WHAT?? Yes, this is an attempt to bring this particular debate up to speed. Postings on ancient threads are hard to follow –

SO.. here’s the deal. Some dude went bonkers and killed a bunch of Amish kids. He used guns. So society is asking.. “Are guns really worth having, as a right?”

It is true, to paraphrase Eddie Izzard – “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. But the guns help.” – We do have more guns and also more per capita gun homicides than most first-world countries. It is a problem.

On the other hand.. we are guaranteed the right to bear arms. People like to hunt. People like the security they feel knowing they have a gun in case someone breaks in. (Of course, there are statistics that suggest that if you have a gun in the house, youre more likely to be killed by a gun than you are likely to stop your assailant.)

I dont know where to stand.. and I thought I would create a new fresh forum where people can recap their opinions on the subject, just so we can keep straight what everyone is thinking.

I wanted to make a recommendation but instead this is going to be a book warning. I’m not recommending “JPod”, Douglas Coupland’s follow-up to his popular 1996 “Microserfs.” Actually, I’m not sure it was intended as a direct follow-up, but it follows the same format.

I loved “Microserfs”. I read it several times when I was in my early 20s and thought the book was great because it connected with me and my lifestyle. However, “JPod” couldn’t get me past page 50. I could have cared less about the characters and thought Coupland was trying to take every piece of modern tech culture and cram it into 300 pages.

Not worth your time, in my opinion!

Matt and Rowan.

You must see the South Park premiere. It could just as well have been CoH 4 months ago. Funny stuff.

Matt,

If a blog gets more than 50 replies, it creates a second page. However, if I go to recent posts and click the “x new replies” link on a blog with more than one page, it takes me to the first page. When I click to the second page, the “*new” posts aren’t new anymore and I can’t just to them.

Is there a way to prevent this. The simple solution is not to have page breaks, but that’s a server resource issue.

Not that many blogs get over 50 posts, but The Needful has and so has Sam’s Gun Control post.

My $.02 Weed