• You must renounce your own values, and embrace mine.
• You must give everything you own to a state authority of my choosing
• You must renounce your personal opinions and religious beliefs and accept my personal opinions and religious beliefs as facts.

...If you do not do these things, there will be trouble. In fact, I promise you there will be war.



The second one is worth 50 points because it's a less popular song by a less popular group.

• My friend and I are walking in the evening. It is a beautiful, star-lit night.
• My friend is looking up at the sky and expressing his/her feelings of awe, and wonder at the universe and our place within it.

...I, on the other hand, am being a total wet blanket and a buzz-kill. Every time my friend makes a comment on how wonderful the universe is, I tell him/her that its all a big lie, and explain that what s/he's really looking at is a big disaster. That in fact, the whole thing is about to come crumbling down upon us all.



The point is, it's very easy to equate something that is "beautiful" with "good", because in the grand-scheme, things that are good are always (eventually) beautiful. We get into trouble because its easy, even natural, for us to reverse this relationship between "goodness" and "beauty", without giving it a second thought.

My greatest hope is that shame has merely gone on holiday in our collective cultures and it will eventually return.

My greatest fear is that shame has died. That our ability to feel shame was only a temporary biological fluke — a minor structural defect in our individual and collective mammalian brains, which has started to fade farther away with each new generation.

Will we soon be as free from shame as all the other animals? Already, many will argue that this would be a good thing. Are they right?

It gets all over you, your feet, your legs, your hair; especially when you come in wet from the ocean.
When you apply sunblock, the sand sticks to your skin.
It gets in your food. It gets in your mouth and between your teeth when you bite down.
It gets all over —and in— the stuff you brought with you.
Sometimes it even gets in your eyes.

All these things are true, but...

The sand is also the only thing that makes going to the beach worthwhile.

• The unemployment rate was: 4.6% (July)
• The DOW closed over $14,000 for the first time in
  history about two weeks earlier (7/19/2007**)
• The poverty rate was: 12.3%
• Median cost of a home (sold) was: $258,000
• Home ownership rate (households) was: 68.2%

(People present claim the actual vote
was 215 - 213, but the details are relatively
unimportant compared to the event itself)


** POST-SCRIPT: It closed at $14,000.41. Many of you probably heard the media reports in October of 2008, stating that October 9, 2007 was the first time the DOW closed over 14000. Sadly, this demonstrates just how far our once-trusted press (and journalism in general) has fallen as well (apparently they all used the anonymous contributions at wikipedia as their source?).

. . .

It just makes you want to grab "cool" by the shoulders and say: "What happened to you man? You used to be cool!"

Between it and the easily-kicked-open stall door lies only a small bale of hay called "patent protection".

And I can't get this wild horse to jump that damn bale of hay to save my life.

Four added years now of kicking, and still counting...

Can you be a top-down and a bottom-up software developer?

Can you be a rebel and embrace traditional values?

Can you be brave and cautious?

I hope so.



= = = = = = = = = = =

Be not righteous over much;
neither make thyself over wise;
why shouldest thou destroy thyself?

Be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish:
why shouldest thou die before thy time?

  Ecclesiastes 7:16-17

Class and Style are two different things.

But an abundance of either one may make up for a lack of the other.



...maybe not anymore

Assumption: You can be just like Woody Harrelson. You can precisely mimic his mannerisms, his voice, his attitude, his charisma, his look.

But, you wont be "just like Woody Harrelson".

Because Woody Harrelson himself is not being "just like" someone else. And you wont be able to simultaneously mimic/model that characteristic.

A question to the mathematically inclined

Assumptions

• everyone in the U.S. has a hybrid vehicle

• Each vehicle has two square meters (2.2 yds) of solar cells on its roof.

• Some conservatively estimated percentage of vehicles will be out under the sun during peak solar hours.

• Some conservative and currently doable efficiency numbers for cell conversion and storage conversion.

• Cars are intelligent enough to manage their energy storage in such a way that they will have capacity in which to store the cell's peak-time output (or use it directly if the car is moving).

The question:

How many barrels of oil would be saved per day?...

Think about it.

1. Millions of square meters of solar cells,

2. all producing energy that will go directly to offsetting fossil fuel consumption (that includes oil we use to make plastics, fertilizer, pesticides, and so much more).

3. Not one square inch of those solar cells will be covering any vegetation or marine life that would not have otherwise been covered.

What if we cover road-sides, or even roads with extra-durable solar cells?

This seems like a win-win for everyone don't you think?

. . . . . . . . . . .
Resources:

• Solar-cell business poised for huge growth 17-Oct-06
  

• Solar star Miasole looking for IPO in 12, 18 months 20-Sep-06
  
  • Miasolé
    

• Will solar-cell shortage end in 2008? 11-Sep-06
  

• Some interesting oil industry statistics
  

• Alternative energies are looking good again 12-Jul-04
  

• National System of Interstate and Defense Highways (facts)
  

• The Interstate Traveler Project (just for brainstorming)
  

  
  
  

• Solar Roadways

  
  
  

• In The Lab::
  • Researchers claim photo-voltaic cell advance
    Bio/nano hybrid looks promising for lower-cost cells with approximately the comparable efficiency of silicon based cells.

• Use personal power to advance issues people care about.

OTHERS

• Use issues people care about to attain personal power.

There have been many debunked theories about why people are so different than the other animals; tool use, opposing thumbs, language, and these days, consciousness or self awareness (at least it wont be debunked since it can't be defined). Though the debate rages, anyone who's ever owned a dog knows that animals can be conscious and self aware. That's not what makes us so different than the other animals.

It is becoming more and more clear to anthropologists though, that the parting branch when humans became so different from the other animals was when they started to believe that those tracks in the clearing might lead to an animal. Though they couldn't see an animal, and they couldn't smell it, they _chose_ to follow those tracks. All other animals will starve to death before wasting energy to follow animal tracks when there is no immediate evidence of an animal present.

But men followed those tracks. They CHOSE to ACT on a belief that the tracks would lead to prey. That required something that (IMO) no other animal has. That required hope and faith.

It is the same hope and faith that leads two brothers to spend thousands of hours and dollars developing a flying machine when many "experts" scoff and say it can't be done. It is the same hope and faith that makes an inventor run failed experiment after failed experiment to develop a dry cell that nobody else thinks possible or even sees any use for. This is the faith that leads a scientist to spend a lifetime chasing down a truth he 'believes' is there.

Even today, when we follow animal tracks and come upon the animal, we are filled with a rush of excitement. I imagine those first humans to follow those tracks were very hungry indeed, and that when they found that animal the experience was nothing short of a miracle.

Faith is a source of hope. Saint Paul defines hope as "the evidence of the existence of things unseen". I believe faith and hope are what differentiates humans from animals. Faith and hope are things you need to exercise, to develop.

We've come some way since that first tentative attempt to follow those tracks. I truly believe that being human --in the sense that we are something more than animals-- absolutely requires us to exercise hope, and an abiding faith in something unseen. For some it will be the reliability of the scientific methods and tenets, for others it will be some notion, such as "There is no God", or we are all part of one consciousness, and for others, it will be a religion, or military dogma. For me, the older faiths are the best. Other faiths may be shallow, either due to lack of time to adapt and grow strong in the face of trials, or because the signs they are founded upon (the "tracks") don't lead to any profitable ends (the "prey").

Faith needs to lead to something "rewarding" for all human kind. Our faith and hope must make us better people --though better is itself indefinable-- because that's the only way we're going to make it off this rock. Even here, only hope in that better future makes me understand that "off this rock" is what's in store for our people some day, if we just have hope and follow our faith.

• Pauper
• Princess
• Tyrant

• Some people can't tell the difference between green and brown.

• Others are unable to discern a difference between the words "ironic" and "irritating"

• still others are incapable of grasping the subtle differences between "contradiction in terms" and "oxymoron".

• In similar fashion, it is possible many are incapable of discerning any differences between "control" and "governance".

• In fact, it seems woefully apparent that most of the otherwise able people in both major U.S. political parties are suffering from at least one of these maladies.