Pollywogs!

Mirriam-Webster defines garbage as so:

Main Entry:

gar·bage

Pronunciation:

\ˈgär-bij\

Function:

noun

Etymology:

Middle English, offal

Date:

15th century

1 a: food waste b: discarded or useless material2 a: trash 1b b: inaccurate or useless data

…what an interesting concept.  I like the original Greek meaning a bit better, it resonates with the sound of the word better, I believe.   I found it after reading the entry ‘book curse‘, which I found on reddit.  My how easily I am distracted…

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I didn’t realize that an iPhone with contract costs (at a minimum) $1,320 for the first year…that is madness!  Makes me really glad I’ve grandfathered my Immix contract for as long as I have, the ‘feature set’ for the price is really sweet…

Hopefully I won’t drop or break this expensive little thing, and can sell it for what I bought it for on eBay if the Android phones reach their potential.

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The netbook market is really expanding, this one looks like a lot of quality equipment for $400.  The Acer Aspire One looks pretty interesting as well.  I don’t know what it is about small electronic devices, but I’m hopelessly hooked…

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This is an excellent idea for subsidising the cost of a solar electric system for your house.  If electric companies were smart, they’d be doing this themselves: allowing customers (at no up front cost of their own) to choose to have renewable installed.  The system would be owned by the power company (say PPL or Southern Company) but the energy would be (mostly) used by the customer’s household.  The bill of course stays the same, just the source of the energy would change.  The customer gets the satisfaction of knowing that their TV and lights aren’t radically changing the environment, and the electric company gets to keep their customer and increases their generation capacity without building additional, massive plants.  As with all things that I think “if it is that simple and necessary, it should simply be DONE”: when I’m dictator, things are going to be different…

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Taxes.  We pay them, and what do we get back?  Bombs, guns and spilled blood. The average individual pays at about a 40% rate, pretty similar to what you see in European countries, and yet we have none of the benifits that your average European country has…because we’re blowing so much money on ‘defense spending’.  How the hell can we justify this war machine that is draining our treasuries like a damn cancer.  But even suggest trimming the military budget and suddenly your a fucking terrorist, soft on defense, aren’t a patriot, or some other mindless drivel.  Oh, and let’s cut taxes on the wealthy while we’re at it.  Fucking baby jesus, what is wrong with this country?  Moronic imbiciles, so easily controlled.  Just turn the TV on and read the corporate message…

…when I’m dictator, things are going to be different…

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Energy.  We need it.  We’re doing it wrong.  Denmark is doing it right.

“Denmark is the model that the United States should be following,” said Steve Pullins, executive director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Modern Grid Initiative.

How’d they do it? Distributed energy.

Unlike traditional “centralized” systems, distributed energy relies on small power-generating technologies like solar panels or ultra-efficient natural-gas turbines built near the point of energy consumption to supplement or displace grid-distributed electricity.

Consumers can not only draw power from the grid, but can feed power into it as well. For instance, homes equipped with solar-power panels could feed unused electricity back into the grid, adding to the total available supply.

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Peru has an energy problem too, as in a lot of rural villages don’t have it!  They also went with the obvious answer, decentralized local generation.  This story made me smile, the entire article restored a little faith in humanity.  The project is just getting started, but it…well, it is just freaking awesome!

To say that this experimental project has been a success so far would be an understatement. Last year 21 homes in Alumbre were equipped with 100-watt wind turbines that power their homes, and the village’s school was powered with a 500-watt turbine. The wind turbines store energy into what are known as “deep cycle” batteries, and the batteries when fully charged can potentially provide energy to homes for up to three days. The batteries need to be replaced every 3-4 years, and for this reason each family with a turbine must contribute to a battery replacement fund on a monthly basis. They pay about 10 nuevo soles each (~ $3 American), a sum that’s less than what most families were previously spending each month on candles and kerosene for lamps.

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I want to try Weight Watchers now:

As I watched her poke around on the screen, managing inventory, calculating points, staying within her range, it hit me:

Weight Watchers is an RPG.

Think about it. As with an RPG, you roll a virtual character, manage your inventory and resources, and try to achieve a goal. Weight Watchers’ points function precisely like hit points; each bite of food does damage until you’ve used up your daily amount, so you sleep and start all over again. Play well and you level up — by losing weight! And the more you play it, the more you discover interesting combinations of the rules that aren’t apparent at first. Hey, if I eat a fruit-granola breakfast and an egg-and-romaine lunch, I’ll have enough points to survive a greasy hamburger dinner for a treat!

Even the Weight Watchers web tool is amazingly gamelike. It has the poke-around-and-see-what-happens elegance you see in really good RPG game screens. Accidentally snack on a candy bar and ruin your meal plan for the day? No worries: Just go into the database and see what spells — whoops, I mean foods — you can still use with your remaining points.

The alternative pretty much sucks:

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Found that article on Provigil that I had misplaced.  I may have found and posted it before, but I can’t remember.  Have I ever mentioned I have a terrible memory?  There was this smart drug I had bookmarked a really cool article about, but I can’t find it now.  Or maybe I had posted it before.  What was it called, pro-something?

A contrasting viewpoint.  I already have the creativity of a ’special needs’ toddler, so I don’t really see this as a downside…

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Hulu: TV without the TV.  Between this and Comedy Central having TDS and the Colbert Report online, I wouldn’t be sad one bit to get rid of my fucking $70 a month pile-of-crap cable TV bill…

No, seriously, you should watch Arrested Development.  This is the pilot, it is hilarious but doesn’t have the production values of the rest of the series.  Hopefully it gets you hooked:

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And while I’m sharing things I find awesome, check out Liam Finn:

This is a bit shorter than the version they played in the live show, but it gives you a small taste. These guys were just fucking awesome…

If you would ever need to purchase music (as in, you appreciate the artists’ work (doesn’t that (I believe) proper use of the apostrophe look unusual?) and want to financially contribute to them) I suggest Amazon.com for your purchasing needs.  FUCK ITUNES.  Amazon has DRM free mp3s, for dirt cheap.  FUCK ITUNES.  I decided to spend $35 or so and bought the Queens of the Stone Age discography (well, I bought each of the albums) after watching their videos on YouTube and realizing I really love this music:

The Blood Is Love

I saw you, in a way
Beyond figure out
These lines of life have been drawn… and can’t be removed
Our eyes is all it took to know

Open up your eyes
Deep blue, glassy lake
and swim ’till water and sky
Now are one, out of two
Oh, my bloodshot eyes

Open up your mouth
Touch your lips to mine
That we may make a kiss that can pierce through death & survive
Your words have branded my mind

Still i hold your hand
Wrapped as if a ring
We of flesh and blood are only carrying
It’s so hard to…
Well, you know…

The seed waits for the reaper to sow
Every breath an art
The dignity to learn it can strain & break your heart
Take all your pieces home
You ask when you’re alone, “what is love?”
The blood is love…

If you don’t want to buy music, I suggest easynews.com with newzleech.com.  A bit more complicated than a .torrent file, but a bit safer yet.  Personally, why someone would buy “Now That’s What I Call Music 70” is beyond me…I, umm, “downloaded” it and felt like I had wasted those invisible internet bits…

Did I mention FUCK ITUNES?  You can even manage your iPod with software other than iTunes (I recently removed that clusterfuck that is (fuck) iTunes and replaced it with gtkpod on my laptop (running Ubuntu 8.04) and Yamipod on my desktop (XP (FUCK VISTA)).

Oh, and I ripped all of the DRM off of my iTunes purchases with some software I can’t even recall the name of anymore.  Did you know iTunes doesn’t let you re-download the music you purchased in the event of a disaster?  Did I mention FUCK ITUNES?

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You hear about that Texas oilman who is pushing for massive investment in wind power?  He isn’t crazy, it’s an excellent idea.  20% of our power from four months in Iraq? Who is promoting this radical and pathetically insane drivel?  Al Gore?  No, the Department of Fucking Energy!

And if America gives big to the wind industry, expect it to give back, generously. Here are the expected benefits, from the report:

• Support of roughly 500,000 jobs in the U.S., with an average of more than 150,000 workers directly employed by the wind industry.
• Increase in annual revenues to local communities to more than $1.5 billion by 2030.
• Reduction of carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation by 25 percent in 2030.
• Reduction of natural gas use by 11%.
• Reduction of water consumption associated with electricity generation by 4 trillion gallons by 2030.

Iraq is such a complicated mess, but one thing is quite clear: the Bush administration went into it with the attitude that ‘no matter how bad it gets, that means more money for our buddies at Halliburton and The Carlyle Group’.  And when you think of how dearly needed those resources are needed to reduce the impact of the inevitable global climate change…

IT.  IS.  FUCKING.  CRIMINAL.

To the future…I’m sorry.  Truly I am.  You always look back and think “was there more that I could have done”.   I realize that we need to work overtime…but we needed to get started yesterday.  I’m so very sorry…

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So I’ve been on piracetam for the past month or so, been going good.  I have recently added a fair bit of fish oil to the morning dose of ginko, Choline, eleuthero and other assorted chemicals, and it’s been treating me quite well.  I nearly always feel alert and awake until perhaps 2 or 3PM.   Once I’m out of piracetam, I’m probably going to continue taking it on a very low level, but I’m interested in trying the next one out: Provigil.  Why?

It’s not an amphetamine or stimulant, the article explained: it doesn’t make you high, or wired. It seems to work by restricting the parts of your brain that make you sluggish or sleepy. No significant negative effects have been discovered. Now students are using it in the run-up to exams as a “smart drug” – a steroid for the mind.

It sounded perfect. A few clicks on-line and I found I could order it from a foreign pharmacy, just £30 for a month’s supply. I called a friend who is a GP, and told her what I was thinking of. She’d heard of people using the drug, and went away and looked up the details. “I think it’s a stupid thing to do, because you shouldn’t ever take drugs you don’t need,” she said when she called back. “Do I think it’ll seriously harm you? No, I don’t. But you’d be much better off taking a long holiday than narcolepsy pills.” Then she warned me: “There is one known side-effect.” Oh, damn I thought. A downside. “It often causes people to lose weight.” Are you mad? You become cleverer and thinner? I whipped out my Visa card immediately.

Yes.  Oh my, yes yes!

I’m designer!

This, however, sound a bit more serious than piracetam, so I’ll likely start at a very low dosage and take it slow…

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Use it or lose it:

Among men who had sexual intercourse less than once a week, there were 79 cases of erectile dysfunction per 1,000 men. That number dropped to 32 cases per 1,000 among men who said they had sexual intercourse once a week, and it dropped even further, to 16 per 1,000, among men who said they had sexual intercourse three or more times a week, the researchers reported.

I’m already impotent.  Enough (too much?) said.

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Speaking of happy marriages, I am a ‘poor’ 35.  I tried to be as brutally honest with the answers as I could.  I would have tanked into ‘very poor (failures)’ if it wasn’t for the “orgasms” and “not cheating on your wife” bits, both of which are pretty heavily weighted positive.  I’m not the ideal husband of the 50s (or whenever this amusing bit of work was created).  I had a LOT of demerits.   Post up your scores in the comments, post anonymously if you like, I don’t mind.

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About fucking time: instant on computing!

The most interesting story the media is downplaying is the ASUS announcement that it will have a ROM boot chip on all its motherboards, which will boot Linux instantly on start-up. When you flick the switch the machine is instantly on. (It’s about time.) Of course, you will have to press another button for the machine to load Windows.

This development is important, since 90 percent of the time all a user wants to do is surf the Web. Often when leaving for a trip, I forget to check the weather. To do so, I would have to start up my computer, wait forever for it to boot, then go online. This way, I just flip it on, and boom—I get a browser and the info and I’m done.

It’s an extremely subversive ploy for a number of reasons. First of all, it gets people used to Linux, gives them a pain-free experience, and provides quick rewards. Second, it shows users that—most of the time—this is all they need. And finally, it makes Windows look like a subsystem not much different from a program that you run under Windows. The psychological effect of this is profound, and the results could be devastating for Microsoft.

Exactly.  I installed PCFluxboxOS on an old 450Mhz AMD K6 with 128MB of memory because I needed a floppy drive last week, and didn’t feel like fooling around with a live, working computer (none of which had a working floppy installed)…and once the slow ass hard drive gets done doing it’s thing it is quite fast enough for 99% of your tasks.  You can write Word .doc files, surf the internet, print…all with just about 200MB of software.  It is wonderful (and free)…but what I really want is instant on computing, where the LiveCD resides on a god damn ROM chip!!!

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Appeaser!  Conspiring with terrorists!  Wuss!  Al Qaeda ball coddler!

Oh wait, you mean everyone is responding very favorably?

For Europeans, America offers two faces: one of cynicism, big business and bullying aggression, another of freedom, fairness and nothing-is-impossible dynamism.

If Bush was seen as embodying that first America, Obama is viewed as fitting the second role — one that Europe has historically loved, respected and relied on.

On top of that comes his charisma. The German news magazine Der Spiegel splashed the headline “Germany meets the superstar” over a photo of Obama on its cover this week.

“Americans need a change, and what’s good for America is good for the whole world,” said Maike Smerling, a physician who was born and raised in the former East Germany.

Juergen Trittin, a leading lawmaker with Germany’s opposition Greens, pinpointed the contrast between Obama’s tour and Bush’s much-protested visits over the years.

“We should be glad that an American is coming who people don’t have to demonstrate against,” Trittin said on N24 television. “The rest of Europe is jealous that Barack Obama is speaking here in Berlin.”

Who would have imagined that decency. honesty, accountability and common sense would work?  That way lies madness!!!

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Speaking of madness…$10 a gallon for gas?  Don’t we hear about how that would cripple the United States?  Well, how does Europe do it?  To begin with, the difference between our $4 and their $10 per gallon at the pump is mostly taxes which are re-invested in a whole manner of constructive (not destructive) ways in Europe.  The other half is the wide range of fuel efficient vehicles at their disposal.

DO NOT BELIEVE FOR A MINUTE THAT “DETROIT” COULD NOT DO THIS HERE IN THE US //TOMORROW//.  Oh, and Washington could tax the shit out of ecologically damaging goods and services, bringing their true cost out in the open.  Political suicide?

You’ve made me an offer I can refuse,
course, either way I get screwed.
counter-proposal, I go home and jerk off.

- I’m Designer (I believe completely out of context)

What a way to operate our only fucking planet…

Driving to Michigan and back, I went about 75MPH the entire time (occasionally faster or slower) and averaged 45MPG on the dot over the entire 1400 odd miles.

Driving from Loyalsock Firewood down to Wool’s True Value and then back to the shop (25 miles) I averaged 62MPG.  The main difference is I set the cruise control for 55MPH and let it ride, both trips were nearly entirely highway miles along mostly flat roads.

Amazing, you don’t think of it much, but MAN does the air start pushing back hard as your speed gets higher and higher.  I notice a little hit at 65, but 75 to 80 is just murder…

Being on guard for concepts in life that are counter-intuitive is an important skill to have in your arsenal.  It is very easy to believe that is something IS a certain way, and much harder to actually see the way it truly is.

I find I have this bias, this difficulty in seeing or inability to predict, often with regards to environmentalism and large corporations.  Being able to winnow out the best path or the truth from such an overwhelming amount of noise, suppression and purposeful misdirection can be nearly impossible.  Simply saying “I assume this is the truth” reduces the mental workload enormously, and served our ancestors very well for hundreds of thousands of years.

In this modern day and age, it is not serving us well at all.  For most folks in a conventional sense, we can continue to act in a way which is actively destructive with little to no regard for the future, as the truth that our small action has any real impact is completely counter-intuitive.  Personally and specifically, the idea that WalMart can have a positive impact (in some aspects) by cutting costs via preferring locally grown produce due to reduced shipping costs,  I find quite counter-intuitive.

Today, I’m going to illustrate a few things which are likely counterintuitive for most folks about the high price of gasoline.

Higher gas prices could be a positive in many different ways.  Currently of course, these prices are a terrible burden for those who can’t afford the cost, and an annoyance to those who can.  Of course everyone just wants lower gas prices for fucks sake! But what if higher gas prices actually improved our current situation in nearly every sense?

…a “price floor” for gasoline: $4 a gallon for regular unleaded, which is still half the going rate in Europe today. Washington would declare that it would never let the price fall below that level. If it does, it would increase the federal gasoline tax on a monthly basis to make up the difference between the pump price and the market price.

To ease the burden on the less well-off, “anyone earning under $80,000 a year would be compensated with a reduction in the payroll taxes,” said Verleger. Or, he suggested, the government could use the gasoline tax to buy back gas guzzlers from the public and “crush them.”

But the message going forward to every car buyer and carmaker would be this: The price of gasoline is never going back down. Therefore, if you buy a big gas guzzler today, you are locking yourself into perpetually high gasoline bills. You are buying a pig that will eat you out of house and home. At the same time, if you, a manufacturer, continue building fleets of nonhybrid gas guzzlers, you are condemning yourself, your employees and shareholders to oblivion.

What a cruel thing for a candidate to say? I disagree. Every decade we look back and say: “If only we had done the right thing then, we would be in a different position today.” (emphasis added)

Ok, so there are people who think that high gas prices are a good thing…why?  Why would they want to have a minimum price for gasoline???

How about the highest participation in mass transit in the United States since 1957?

“It’s very clear that a significant portion of the increase in transit use is directly caused by people who are looking for alternatives to paying $3.50 a gallon for gas.”

Some cities with long-established public transit systems, like New York and Boston, have seen increases in ridership of 5 percent or more so far this year. But the biggest surges — of 10 to 15 percent or more over last year — are occurring in many metropolitan areas in the South and West where the driving culture is strongest and bus and rail lines are more limited.

Another side effect is that people are beginning to actually conserve and be more thrifty in their gas purchases.

The increase in transit use coincides with other signs that American motorists are beginning to change their driving habits, including buying smaller vehicles. The Energy Department recently predicted that Americans would consume slightly less gasoline this year than last — for the first yearly decline since 1991.

That thrift is also starting to swing the purchasing choices away from the unsustainable and slowly towards more rational decisions:

In fact, after 17 years worth of being this country’s best-selling vehicle, the Ford F-150 full-size pickup (42,973) has fallen for the first time to fifth place behind the Honda Accord (43,728), Toyota Camry (51,291), Corolla (52,826) and your new best-selling vehicle in the U.S., the Honda Civic (53,299). Note to automakers: that would be the sound of the canary in your coal mine hitting the floor.

And of course (and perhaps most importantly) the reduced consumption from higher prices results in an immediate and substantial benefit to the environment:

As Dubner blogged last week, Americans logged 11 billion fewer miles on the road in March of this year than they did in March 2007. That contributed to a cut of 9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted by the U.S. in the first quarter of 2008.

Increasing mass transit usage, modifying our purchasing habits towards more appropriate choices, and reducing our carbon load on the planet?  It may be counter-intuitive, but higher gas prices could be one of the best things to happen to the United States in a long time.