If you’ve never had a job in corporate America, the following video is exactly what it is like. To sum up, it’s just a bunch of people taking decisions about things that they know nothing about. And for every one there’s a business management professor somewhere laughing his ass off.
My friend Michelle just sent me a question that I thought would make an interesting blog post. Her question:
If we went to the moon in 1969, why aren’t we going now? NASA first says money, then says it’s radiation that cannot be flown through. Did the radiation become more dangerous? can radiation grow? I say no to both and guess money. And then I say why isn’t there money? And then I say we spent it all on useless wars. Do you have an opinion on this? We discussed this at work, and it was the most intellectually challenging discussion I have ever had here.
Yes, yes I do have an opinion on this. First let me say that I am not aware of any statements that NASA has made regarding not going back to the Moon because of radiation. This sounds more like Moon Hoax propaganda. However, the Sun’s radiation does increase, but by such a small amount that over even 40 years it would be hard to measure. Even over the last 2000 years, the Sun’s output has remained virtually stable, only varying by about 0.1%. Only on the scale of millions of years would we notice the increase. In about one billion years, the Earth will be so hot that life as we know it will not be able to exist.
The real reason we aren’t going back to the Moon is an almost complete lack of public interest or political will. The Apollo project was cancelled due to the lack of political and public support. That support began to wane almost the instant Neil Armstrong’s foot was placed on the Moon. It hasn’t returned. Politicians these days lack any real vision for the future and spend most of their time pandering to the electorate on social issues and having their palms greased in smokey back rooms.
I think the biggest problem is that Americans are just plain lazy. Kennedy said:
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…
I think a lot of people miss that last part. Doing hard things keeps us challenged and keeps us innovating, but we haven’t done anything hard in a long time, probably since the Moon landings. Nothing we have done since has matched that and we haven’t even really attempted to do anything special.
So what now? Personally, I think the United States is done. Unless something big happens in the next few years to really motivate us as a people, we will recede into history just as our European forbearers have. Our time as the world’s leader is over and that task has been handed off. So good luck to India and China. I see them as dominating the next 100 years of progress and history.
Blowback is a concept that most people today cannot understand. I linked to the Wikipedia article on the topic, but the first line sums it up.
Blowback is a term used in espionage to describe the unintended consequences of covert operations. Blowback typically appears random and without cause, because the public is unaware of the secret operations that provoked it.
Examples of blowback are the 9/11 attacks, the 7/7 bombings, the Iran hostage crisis, and the Soviet-Cuba alliance.
At this point I’m sure the Republicans in the crowd are doing their best Rudy Giuliani impersonation and demanding that I take it back, but I won’t be doing that. Blowback is real and when we start messing with other people’s countries, they are going to start messing with ours. Now I’m not saying that terrorists are justified in what they do, but I understand the reasons they do it and understand that part of the blame sits squarely on our shoulders. That’s right boys and girls, the United States isn’t the glorious force of good you’ve been led to believe it to be. We’ve got blood on our greedy little hands, just like everyone else.
There’s an old axiom that says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” While we can’t always live by this rule, it’s a good rule to follow whenever we can. If we followed this rule, blowback wouldn’t exist in our foreign relations or our personals lives. So do what you can to prevent blowback.
You may or may not have heard me moaning and complaining about Internet Explorer (IE) when it comes to web development. IE is the default web browser that comes with Microsoft Windows. About half of you are using IE to view this post. If you don’t know what you are using to view this post, then it is probably IE. There are several versions of IE that are still in use, from version 5 to version 8 which is still in beta. Most people use 6 or 7 with the majority using 7. Version 7 is the default version in Windows Vista, version 6 is the default in Windows XP, and version 5 is the default in Windows 2000.
The reason I moan and complain about IE is that it’s a hot mess of rendering bugs, specifically IE6 which is still used by a large number of people. It was written about 8 years ago when the web was very different. Now there are all sorts of new technologies and standards, but IE6 doesn’t support many of them, and never will. You see, when IE6 was released Microsoft essentially had a monopoly on the browser industry. About 95% of internet users used IE, so they decided they didn’t need to devote any time or money to making it better. They let it languish for about 6 years, an eternity in the software business. While it was languishing, new technologies and standards were developed and new browsers started popping up that were more compliant with the new standards.
Finally, after losing about 15% of their market share, Microsoft decided to release a new IE, IE7. IE7 is much better than IE6 as far as standards compliance, but it still has some of the same bugs. Previous to IE7, developers had used special hacks to make their web pages work in IE6, but now those hacks no longer worked. This was fine except that some of the bugs that the hacks fixed were still in IE7. Now new hacks had to be developed just for IE7. What a pain in my ass!
So now whenever I am developing a new theme for my site, I have to look at IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, Opera, and Safari to make sure everything is rendering correctly. Thankfully Firefox, Safari, Opera, and IE8 render everything about the same and I only have to really worry about IE6 and to a much lesser extent IE7 and to an even lesser extent Firefox Mac (which doesn’t render the same as Firefox for Windows or Linux for some strange reason) when it comes to rendering bugs.
That’s the problem, now you can be part of the solution! The best thing to do is to download the latest version of Firefox or Opera immediately. Both of these browsers work great, are quick, and work on the three major platforms (Windows, Linux, and Mac). Mac users can also use any browser based on Webkit (like Safari or Omniweb) or Camino which is based on the same rendering engine as Firefox. If you are on a Mac and still using IE/Mac, remember that it’s down the street, not across the road. If you are a Linux user, you should already know what you are doing and should be using a modern browser.
And now for you Windows users. If you are using a version of Windows prior to 98, you need to take that computer to a recycling center and buy a new one. Pay someone to haul it away if you have to. If you are using Netscape, stop… just stop. If you are using Windows 98, Windows ME, or Windows 2000, you should be able to "upgrade" to IE6 at the very least. To be honest, if you are using one of these operating systems, you should just go ahead and send your computer to the recycling center as well if you can’t get a copy of XP or Vista (or some version of Linux). If you are using XP or Vista you should be using Firefox or IE7 or 8. If you are viewing this on IE6 on XP and cannot upgrade, that means you are viewing this from work and your boss just called and told me to tell you to STOP SURFING THE WEB AND GET BACK TO WORK!
Here’s a little ditty I call “Leafblower.”
Leafblower, oh how I hate you
Your loud motor running
Your constant drone
It sucks the life from me.
I remember the rake
Its soft, gentle strokes
Its soothing rythmn
Peaceful work on peaceful days.
Leafblower, all I hear
Is screaming
Is screeching
My mind is going.
Leafblower, please go away
Your life is unnecessary
Your contribution is nil
We won’t miss you at all.
The other day I was thinking about war and how terrible and stupid it is. I was wondering why we fight wars. Doesn’t everyone think they are terrible and stupid? Obviously not or we would not fight them. I think there must be some part of my brain that is missing, the part that allows me to understand war.
And who are the most blood thirsty killers in all the world? Why, Americans of course. We go around imposing our will on everyone with little regard for the people we are imposing on. We expect everyone to do things we think they ought to be done and we can’t understand it when people don’t see us the way we see ourselves (as the liberators of the world).
We seem to be dead set on turning Iraq into a little America, a bastion of truth, justice, and the “American Way.” But where is the justice for the Iraqi people? Don’t they have a right to decide on a government for themselves, just as we had that right 230 years ago? Why is an American puppet government okay for them?
Back to the war thing. General Robert E. Lee said, “It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it.” I think the General could see that even though in his day war was still a terrible thing, that one day war would become not so terrible and in fact all to easy. I think that is where we are now as Americas. The true horrors of war are known only to the realitively few troops in the field. And we continue to try to find ways to make even those troops obsolete.
There is an old Star Trek episode called “A Taste of Armageddon.” In it, two planets fight a war with computers. After each battle the casualities are counted and citizens are chosen by the computer to be disintegrated as if the attack were real. At first I thought this was an absurd concept, but as technology advances and war becomes easier, it no longer seems so absurd. It represents the ultimate in ease of war, a goal we seem destined to achieve.
So what is the point of this whole post? I don’t know. I just wanted to write down some thoughts I had on war and human nature. I keep thinking that I want to understand this war part of the brain. I am human so I must have it, even if it is buried deep inside me. But what do I do to explore it? Why do I want to understand something that is so terrible?
I just found out that goatse.cx has been taken down because the registrar for that domain (cx) does not like the content. The goatse.cx site is the whole reason people hate the internet and the whole reason I love it so much. It has been the bastion of smutiness and general tastelessness on the internet for years.
But never fear, you can still go to goat.cx and take in all the goodness of goatse.cx. Enjoy!
Here us the text of an email I sent to Michael Moore after watching his movie Fahrenheit 9/11:
After seeing Fahrenheit 9/11, I thought that I should take some kind of action. I thought about it all day, but could not think of anything suitable. The main thing I had trouble with is that your movie only shows the corruption in the Bush administration. But we all know that the corruption in Washington is spread equally between the two ruling parties. Struggling with this, I decided to visit your website and see what suggestions you might have for actions I can take. Your first suggestion is that I register 10 people to vote. Well that’s all fine and dandy, but who are we supposed to vote for? I mean, I’ve already decided that both main parties are corrupt and the fringe parties are either too extreme or unable to field viable candidates or both.
I suppose what I am really saying is that I cannot vote for Bush or Kerry and any vote I may cast for another candidate will have little effect. I want real change. I want my government back from the lobbyists and party elites. I am not a leader though, and so few people see things as I do. My goal seems unattainable.
What are your thoughts? Any suggestions?
Joseph Bales
Hermitage, TN
