ITJoe

Free Stuff

2009-02-10T06:10:34Z

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

- What I create will be just for you.
- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
- You will receive your item before the end of the year. No guarantees on how soon.
- You will have no clue what the item is going to be.
- Whatever it is, I will make it with you in mind. Be prepared.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you have to repost this meme and make and send out five surprises of your own! I think this is entirely fair - and this is definitely a good kind of fun to spread around!

itjoe @ 2009-02-02T14:00:00

2009-02-02T20:03:39Z

Two of RPI's most notable features in a nutshell:

New Wallpaper

2009-01-29T15:46:22Z

This is my new wallpaper: http://henchmanshelper.com/

Road Trip!

2009-01-15T16:33:39Z

A cat in Alabama was evicted from a post office for not paying taxes. I know where I'm headed this weekend!

I Want To Buy Goodyear

2008-12-18T15:28:01Z

Share Your Ideas with Obama

2008-11-11T21:25:54Z

President-Elect Obama is hard at work getting this country back on track, but he’s counting on input from all of us.

I just wrote in to share my vision for where President-Elect Obama should lead the country, and I thought you might want to do the same:

http://www.change.gov/yourvision

We're each only one person, but together we have a resounding voice.

Ron Howard's Obama Ad

2008-10-24T23:41:50Z

Talk about a week of endorsements. At least this one is entertaining, especially for anyone who likes old TV shows:

Angling for the Geek Vote

2008-10-17T15:41:15Z

Bonus points for Obama:

Said Obama: "Contrary to the rumors you have heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-el, to save the planet Earth," a reference to Superman.

Full story here.

John Walcott on Truth

2008-10-10T20:03:43Z

John Walcott gave an inspired speech accepting the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. Here is an inspiring quote on the modern trend towards valuing balanced coverage above truth:

That brings me to may last point: Relying on The Times, or McClatchy or any other news source, for all the truth is dumb, but it's infinitely preferable to the pernicious philosophical notions that there is no such thing as truth, that truth is relative, or that, as some journalists seem to believe, it can be found midway between the two opposing poles of any argument.

My father, who's with us today, made his living designing navigational instruments for aircraft, missiles and submarines, and although my mathematical and engineering skills are, shall we say, less evident than his, I learned two important lessons from his work.

The first is that if you want to know where you are, it's helpful to know where you started. The second is a concept that's called "ground truth," which in a nutshell means checking your calculations against information collected on the ground. In other words, reporting.

I know that I'm wading into deep and muddy water here, but I'm doing so in deference, or rather, in reverence, to the fact that I.F. Stone was a scholar as well as a journalist. He taught himself ancient Greek to write about the trial of Socrates, and I still struggle with modern French, but I'll wade in nevertheless.

Does the truth lie halfway between say, slavery and abolition, or between segregation and civil rights, or between communism and democracy? If you quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Winston Churchill, in other words, must you then give equal time and credence to Hitler and Joseph Goebbels? If you write an article that's critical of John McCain, are you then obligated to devote an identical number of words to criticism of Barack Obama, and vice versa?

The idea that truth is merely a social construct, that it's subjective, in other words, first appeared in academia as a corruption of post-modernism, but it’s taken root in our culture without our really realizing it or understanding its implications.

It began with liberal academics arguing, for example, that some Southwestern Indians' belief that humans are descended from a subterranean world of supernatural spirits is, as one archaeologist put it, "just as valid as archaeology." As NYU philosophy professor Paul Boghossian puts it in a wonderful little book, "Fear of Knowledge": " ... the idea that there are many equally valid ways of knowing the world, with science being just one of them, has taken very deep root."

Although this kind of thinking, relativism and constructivism, started on the left, many conservatives now feel empowered by it, too, and some of them have embraced it with a vengeance on issues ranging from global warming and evolution to the war in Iraq.

"Journalists live in the reality-based world," a White House official told Ron Suskind, writing for The New York Times Magazine back in the headier days of 2004. "The world doesn't really work that way any more. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

I respectfully disagree.

The Church was wrong, and Copernicus and Galileo were right.

There is not one truth for Fox News and another for The Nation. Fair is not always balanced, and balanced is not always fair.

No matter how devoutly they may have believed their own propaganda, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were wrong about Enron, and a whole lot of very smart, very rich people were very wrong about mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps.

President Bush was wrong to think that it would be a simple matter to make Iraq the mother of all Mideast democracy.

Or, as the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau said when he was asked what he thought historians might say about the First World War: "They will not say that Belgium invaded Germany."

I'm not talking here about matters of taste or of partisan politics or, heaven help us, of faith: Whether Monet or Manet was a better painter or whether Jesus was the Messiah, a prophet or a fraud. Those are personal matters, beliefs, opinions and preferences of which we all must learn to be more tolerant.

Harry G. Frankfurt, an emeritus professor of philosophy at Princeton, puts it this way in a marvelous little book called, "On Truth" (which is the sequel to "On Bullshit"): "It seems ever more clear to me that higher levels of civilization must depend even more heavily on a conscientious respect for the importance of honesty and clarity in reporting the facts, and on a stubborn concern for accuracy in determining what the facts are."

I think whether it's a facade of "balanced coverage" or a case of overt political spin, journalism has moved away from reporting provable facts. Perfect objectivity may be impossible, but it's an ideal that every journalist should strive for. Editorials and PR-firm-produced segments should have no place in the news. Americans should be encouraged to form their own opinions instead of accepting them from authority figures on TV.

The American Car

2008-10-02T15:09:09Z

"A recent study found the average American walks about 900 miles a year. Another study found Americans drink, on the average, 22 gallons of alcohol a year. That means, on average, an American gets about 41 miles to the gallon." - Unknown

America The Gullible

2008-09-08T16:34:06Z

"49 percent of Americans think the president has the authority to suspend the Constitution." - US News and World Report, 6/3/2008

I'm not sure which is worse: the fact that people believe that, or the fact that it's well-justified by the president's actions. Regardless of his intentions or the most necessary of ends, it is hard to deny that the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendment have suffered under the Bush Presidency.

Update: When reporters are arrested for "unlawful assembly", you really have to wonder about the U.S.

Doctor Who

2008-07-08T05:11:17Z

Wow. Go now. Watch it. You'll thank me. Thanks to girlandetc for originally recommending it. In the words of The Doctor, you're brilliant!

RIP George Carlin

2008-06-23T18:17:26Z

Truly, the world is a less vibrant place without him. He was a word-smith without equal, and one of the greatest comedic minds of our time.

Curiosity

2008-06-19T20:20:13Z

If you could ask anyone one question, and be guaranteed an absolutely complete and truthful answer...

1. Who would you ask?
2. What question would you ask?
3. Why that one, above all other questions/people?

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-25T18:07:07Z

Have a Merry Gift-Giving-Holiday-Time, Everyone!

Mark Your Calendars!

2007-12-11T21:38:06Z

It's already happened this year, but mark your calendars for International Pretend to Be a Time Traveler Day. So start getting ready for next year, and make Doctor Who proud.

Overnight Shifts are Bad

2007-11-30T20:30:49Z

A new study links overnight shifts with cancer, on par with UV radiation and diesel exhaust fumes. I remember working those long late nights at TeleTech for half-a-pittance. Fortunately, everyone I knew there has found less masochistic work elsewhere.

Simplicity at Its Finest

2007-11-30T18:54:33Z

Chat Noir is a beautifully simple flash game. Stop the cat from running off the field by clicking the dots. It's hard, but you can win!

Setting a Course

2007-10-30T16:05:28Z

We are creatures of pleasure, and people of conscience. We all gravitate towards happiness, though it comes in as many forms as there are people. We see ourselves as good people, regardless of how society views us. Beyond either of those tendencies, our humanity gives us the ability to set our own course in life. Even to the point of rebelling against pleasure and conscience, we have real choices in life.

The key seems to be finding a driving force--something powerful enough and important enough to supersede everything else. Without such a purpose, we get lost in day-to-day life and short-term pleasure. We must go beyond ourselves to find something greater. In seeking purpose, we turn to ideals.

An ideal could be a role such as father, an archetype such as artist-scientist, or a principle such as justice. Some ideals have the power to move us deeply, while others seem empty. I think our life experiences play a large part in what has the power to drive us. Only by exploring different aspects of the self can we discover the things that move us.

It is no small challenge to driving force for our lives, but the far greater challenge is living it. Once we have found an ideal, we must find ways to put it into practice on a day-to-day basis. Picking a destination is the first step, but it means nothing unless we chart a course and raise the sails. We must use that driving force to pursue meaningful goals. Without achievable goals, we once again become lost in the day-to-day.

Setting goals is a lot like programming: it's all about breaking big tasks into smaller pieces. Let's say one of our goals is to cook a five-course meal. If we put "cook a five-course meal" on our to-do list, it seems like an insurmountable task. To reach our goal, we need to break it into parts. In this case, we could break it into four parts: find/print recipes online, buy the ingredients/tools, combine the recipes into a cooking plan, and cook the meal. Each of these sub-goals is small enough to achieve in one sitting and specific enough that they don't require figuring out what we need to do. We could further break down these sub-goals into to-do lists. Which recipes are we looking for? What do we need to buy?

The real trick to managing goals or to-do lists is breaking it down so that each item requires as little thought as possible. Planning requires a large investment of mental energy to figure out what we need to do and how we need to do it. If we have to stop and plan for each item on our list, they look like daunting tasks. Once they're broken down into simpler instructions, we can finish them even if we're tired or distracted.

Windows Vista

2007-10-29T17:00:37Z

Wow, it even boots! If my version of Windows booted, I would be SO happy.

Time and Talent

2007-10-26T18:33:44Z

I believe we've finally discovered the source of most of our national/worldwide problems:

That, and maybe the fact that--all things being equal--people tend towards insanity.

Odd Fodd

2007-09-28T15:03:40Z

This just looks cool. More proof that presentation is the better part of cooking. I wonder if you could get the same effect by spiraling a potato and baking it...

Magazines!

2007-09-26T15:30:03Z

Every year I get some significant discounts on magazines at work. I've put them on the web this year. Take a look at what they're offering, and click through PayPal if you're interested in getting a subscription. FYI, my deadline to get this in is 10/12. I'm looking forward to grabbing a few of the photography magazines myself, and I thought I'd pass on the discount.

To Be Young Again

2007-09-24T17:44:11Z

"Oh, to be young again. I'm glad I'm not young anymore. I was an IDIOT when I was younger. Maturity is knowing you were an idiot in the past. If that's true, then wisdom is knowing you'll be an idiot in the future. And common sense is knowing that you should try not to be an idiot NOW." - Questionable Content

27 years old, here's to all the many times I've been a complete idiot. :)

Nature v. Technology

2007-09-22T05:22:20Z

There are some dichotomies in life that seem significant and unresolvable. I've decided to ponder a few of these in more philosophical posts. This would be the first.

Nature and technology are mutually exclusive. In this context, I define technology as the exertion of humankind's will to alter the natural state of the world. Technology is not a perfect word to describe that concept, but it's easier than repeating that last sentence. This is an interesting conflict, because humankind is part of nature. That being said, I believe that no other part of nature exerts a greater egocentric force on the whole. It is easy to say that a tree is natural, while a car is not. It is much harder to draw the line when comparing a bird's nest to a primitive hut. I would say that a hut is very close to the natural state of the world, while a car is much different. Some concepts are difficult to define, but hopefully that comparison conveys my meaning.

Both nature and technology can be aesthetically pleasing. From the marvels of modern architecture to the natural majesty of Angel Falls, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The difference is that technology tends to provide some benefit to humankind at some cost to the natural ecosystem. Making tools requires mining metal, which has a well documented impact on the environment. The impacts may be large or small, and it is often difficult to quantify the ways in which we affect nature. Global warming in an excellent example of an impact that is difficult to definitively measure. Technology has given humankind undeniable benefits, but it has also had an undeniably negative impact on nature.

The twist comes from renewable energy and recycling. More advanced technology (like solar power) can provide benefits to humankind with little or no impact to the environment. Recycling can use older technology instead of natural resources. At some point it seems technology may mitigate its own effect on nature. If technology ceases to affect nature, is it still opposed to nature? In a different way, yes. At that point it moves to separate humankind from nature.

Reaping the benefits of technology, we become increasingly distant from nature. Many people live their lives in cities and suburbs, away from wilderness and animals. They eat food from a supermarket, and spend most of their time in climate-controlled offices. While these conditions seem beneficial for humankind, it makes the separation of nature and technology even clearer. So the conflict of nature and technology comes down to a choice: is it better to seek the benefits of technology or favor a strong connection with nature? The more your life revolves around technology, the less it can revolve around nature and vice versa.

Many people feel drawn to nature. There is a beauty in nature, a combination of simplicity and almost fractal complexity. Being part of nature brings a sense of being part of something greater, and in some sense of being unselfish. Many people also feel drawn to technology. We can take pride in human determination and ingenuity. Moreover, it brings a lifestyle that lends itself to finer pursuits like philosophy and art.

This question has no easy answer, and I will not propose one here. Ultimately, I think the balance between technology and nature is a very personal choice that each of us must make for ourselves. The importance is in being conscious of the choice, and making it knowingly.