And I must say something here about the capitol. Everyone wants to see the white house, and yeah, its cool, but it's the Capitol that's really pimpin. If you haven't been, you should. Even after seeing it thousands of times on TV, and many times in person, even after a tour of places that most people don't get to go, it is still a stunning building every time you see it.
So anyway, I was more pleased by the Archives than I expected. I was expecting cheesy laminated signs and exhibits for kids about "History All Around Us" and "History In Motion" and there was plenty of that, but its all about the rotunda. As soon as you walk in, BAM- The fucking Magna Carta. An ORIGINAL edition. The Magna Carta, which almost single-handedly brought us out of the dark ages, behind a half inch of glass. Holy shit.
Right after that is the emancipation proclamation, various letters (The letter to President Jackson notifying him that Georgia ratified the 13th amendment was particularly snarky- worth a read) and some other famous docs, and of course, the reason you all came out tonight, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
The Declaration was cool. I mean don't get me wrong, This is what started it all- it demands respect. And you have to remember, the guys who drafted and signed this were on top of the hill- they were wealthy landowners, and they had the most to lose- their property, their land, and their heads. It took mad balls to sign that thing, man. But it was the Constitution I really wanted to see. Plus, it was treated like such shit, its barely readable any more. If Nick Cage got his hands on this thing, it would have turned to dust. Laaaame movie. But I digress.
The Constitution of the United States, all 4 pages. This is it. Everyone wanted to see the Declaration, but at the end of the day, it was really just a big Fuck You to King George. It was Thomas Jefferson's bitchy LiveJournal Post. The Constitution was a very careful study by the best minds of the time. It was carefully considered, debated, scrapped and restarted. It is a blueprint for a better world; a better mankind. And to this day, we have not found a better way to organize people in one place on the planet and get them to live together in relative peace and sanity and prosperity. Churchill was understated when he said "Democracy is the worst form of government in the world, aside from all the rest". I think for all of it's faults, if you take a long term view of things this republic has done damn well.
The Declaration of Independence led to war; the Constitution led to the longest, greatest reign of prosperity the planet has probably ever seen. Ill say it: The U.S. Constitution and what it stands for just might be the most important thing man has yet created. And its not just me; Thomas Paine thought so too. He said the Constitution was the start of not just a new nation, but a new world.
It's 3 hours later and I still have a lump in my throat.
Jefferson gets mot of the credit, but have a look at John Adam's letter, "Thoughts On Government". Now, I don't have internet so I can't check my facts, but its dated 1776, and it was after the Declaration… was he in Paris yet? It's not an open letter so I can only think it was correspondence directly to Jefferson, or maybe Sam Adams… it opens as if he has been asked for his thoughts on how to form a government once this war is over. Anyway its pretty funny- he starts off by playing modest and saying how he couldn't possibly answer such a weighty question all by himself… then goes right on to do just that, talking about his thoughts as if he'd been working on them for years.
He goes on to slam all the thinkers that came before him, shooting down Pope's "For forms of government let fools contest, that which is administered best is best" saying well yeah, obviously we want it run well so lets create something that CAN be run well; MUST be run well. He even slams Locke and Milton and I think even Paine. "Poets read history to pick flowers, not fruits". He's basically saying "all those guys that talk about the great historians and governments of the past are just swooning poetically- but "I" know what they were really about!. No one would say he wasn't full of himself :)
I wish I had the text on me right now, Im probably killing those quotes. But I definitely remember he gives a shout-out to Confucious and even Zoroaster, so we know how big is… library is, but he is quick to reclaim his Christian soul and remembers to call the J-man "Really sacred".
If you've ever heard the phrase "A government of lawns, and not of men", it was from this letter. It was amazing to me how much he figured out way before Jefferson- the bicameral legislature, the executive branch in charge of the militias, and the justices appointed for life. he even gave the congress the right to meet in 7- or 9-man quorums. He had a few things off, too- he wanted the legislature to meet and designate one of their own to be president, for a term of one year, and not to be re-elected until taking at least one year off… if there were so few men that were willing to take on the role, that is.
I love his idea of one year terms; He didn't want to see what happened in Denmark, where the parliament voted itself from 3 year terms to 7, then eventually to lifetime appointments, and then even allowing familial succession. "Where one year terms end, so there slavery begins". Adams foresaw the president and indeed even the congress as men who take up the noble throne of leadership for only a short time: "As bubbles on a sea of matter, surfacing for a short while, rising, breaking, and to the sea returning".
If only.
The thing I was most touched by though, was how clearly Adams KNEW what was going on. He knew how imprint this was. So did Jefferson. Franklin was probably drunk on Applejack the whole time, but Revere, Locke, all of them knew that they were creating something lasting, something great. I envy them so much: To not only be fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time, but to KNOW it. Jesus didn't forsee his legacy, nor did Newton, or Copernicus, or Magellan. But these men had a gift and they knew it. That's fortune beyond measure.
Well anyway, I should go. But you should read that letter. And the rest of Jefferson and Adams letters to one another after their reconciliation. I'm currently looking for a good compendium of all of them. Anyone have a good one?
Oh, this is killing me, I have to know- J.Q. Adams was the fourth president, right? There was a poster in the Mint that said only 17% of people could name the first four presidents in order. Thats WEAK! …Unless I'm wrong, then its quite understandable.
Wow, four people offered to pick me up. You guys are the best.
Next time I have a party it should be at Logan so people show up :)
Posted via LiveJournal.app.
This has really been weighing on me lately. I mean, I've been bouncing it around in my head for... a long, long time, trying to come to terms with how I really feel on the subject.
The earth is getting hotter. On this I am convinced, but not because of the evidence- all the evidence our entire scientific community has managed to gather is meager at best, a joke. How long have we been measuring the planet's temperature accurately? Decades? And yet we feel we can predict down to a degree what is happening? Sure, perhaps we have gained a few degrees over the century. But that is like going to a casino, and playing roulette- you bet black, and black comes up. You bet black again, and black comes up again. "Wow!" you think, "At this rate, I'll be a millionaire in an hour! its obviously going to keep coming up black!". The info we have is not nearly enough to point to a trend. The earth has been heating and cooling for its entire lifespan. We can't possibly predict what it will do in a thousand years, or a hundred, or ten, simply by extrapolating the data we have now.
On the other hand- we know what burning fossil fuels leads to. We can quite accurately show -and reproduce- what happens when you release too much carbon into an ecosystem with no way to dissipate it. And we know just how much fossil fuel we are burning. I have no doubt at all that this is ging to lead to extreme, cascading greenhouse effects in the near and long-term future. And I also am convinced that there's nothing we can do to stop or even slow it- it would take cooperation and sacrifice on a global scale, the likes of which the planet as never seen.
No, friends, this is our fate. The earth is going to get warmer. Seas will rise, climates will chance, weather will change, ecosystems will change, irreparably. The only question I have is... should we care?
Lets look at the down sides to global warming.
Rising seas. Rising seas will lead to flooding and destruction of coastal towns. But so what? It's not going to happen overnight. Were not going to supper flash floods and destroyed metropolises. We will have years, and years and years to adapt, to build levees, or to relocate. Just look at Venice, they're doing fine. Losing the coasts won't lead to global overcrowding- the thawing will open up billions of miles of arable land in Greenland, Canada, Siberia, etc. Shifting rivers, lakes, and dams have always led to relocation, and we've always done fine.
Warming climate. Warming climates will lead to expanded tropical zones, which in turn will spread tropical diseases such as typhoid and malaria. However, it could also lead to the extinction of countless strains of influenza and other virii that thrive in colder temperatures. And it's pretty asinine to get up in arms about malaria anyway- millions of people already die of it annually and we do very little to stop it.
Mass extinction. Species already go extinct every minute of every day- good thing there are millions more, and still more evolving to adapt to new ecosystems and new climates. There are 4 times as many species on Manhattan now, than there were 300 years ago when it was settled by Europeans. Species have always gone extinct- that's how they evolve and adapt. That's evolution.
But, but, but... this time WE are causing the extinctions, that's not natural! Says who? We are an organism on this planet, and we are as natural as a swarm of locust, or a viral pandemic, or a volcano or a meteor.
Sure, the planet may go on, but it may get so bad its no longer hospitable for humans! I really dont think this will ever happen. The planet has always gone through cycles, and ever since it settled down after its birth it has been hospitable to carbon based life. This will happen over centuries or even millennia, giving us time to evolve and adapt to some degree. Furthermore, even if the earth changes faster than we can evolutionarily keep up, I believe our collective intelligence has reached a critical mass, where we will be able to compensate with technology to bridge the gap. Perhaps not 6 billion of us, inf act, almost certainly not that many if things get truly bad, but enough of us. And lets say things DO get so bad that we can only sustain one billion.. or one million... thats still plenty to keep the race going, and its not as if the other 5 billion are going to suddenly die off- were talking long-view here... birth rates will go down, mortality rates will go up, and that's that.
My point is, no matter how bad things get, no matter how extreme the plant changes, we will adapt, and things wont seem any different to one generation from the last one. Life will go on. Mankind will go on. And to think otherwise is arrogant and pathetic. We're wasting time worrying about the inevitable, when what we should be doing is advancing technology to deal with the eventuality that there are no longer any fossil fuels to burn. We should advance technology and human knowledge for the hell of it. We should do it because evolution is every organism's purpose.
Comments? This ought to be fun.
Ill probably make another call in a couple weeks to add people if people come around, but no guarantee they wont be sold out by then.
alex k
crystal
Alex Savitzky
ruthie
johnathan
Amy
warren
gary
alison
alison's boyfriend
dave
mali
malis old roommate morgan
mali's old roommate morgans' boyfriend
2 more with dave & mali
aaron
aaron +1 (jess)
jen lipschitz
adam
sara wendell
kathleen
linda
linda +1
winnie from the theater
lis from the theater
carl from orlando and also the theater
statik
kristen
kristen +1
kyle koz
kelly
kimbeth
splean
kyle kydd
kyle kydd +1
bethany
trent
cookie
tasha
alex
crystal
taco
Alex Savitzky
ruthie
johnathan
Amy
warren
gary
alison
alison's boyfriend
dave
dave
dave
mali
mali
mali
aaron
aaron (jess)
jen lipschitz
adam
Kathleen
Medieval Manor is Thursday, December 17th. Please PayPal me $30 by THIS FRIDAY if you want in.
21 people so far and growing!
21 people so far and growing!
Imagine you have a deaf chile who couldn't see Up in the theater, and he has been dying to see it for months. Finally, you get the movie from Netflix or Block buster or Redbox, bring it home, pop it in... and no closed captioning. Not cool, Disney, not cool.
I saved you the trouble of wasting a half hour on Disneys web site. Here's the feedback form for the "corporate responsibility" department of Disney corporate: http://corporate.disney.go.com/responsib
Are there any communities for the metro north area that I don't know about, or would there be demand for one?
This is a RAID. Redundant Array of Independent Disks. AS you can see, it's got 16 drives, running simultaneously. it gives much better performance, but it also needs a much bigger pipe to connect it to a computer: usually fibre optic cables. But its so fast it needs a dedicated server and special software to tie it all together. That's where SAN software comes in. it stands for Storage Area Network. Simply put, it lets everyone see massive amounts of store as if it was connected to their very own computer, and it lets people like me manage that data more efficiently. Apple's solution is called, simply enough, XSAN.
I've been wanting to get certified in XSAN for years- its the last step to Total Video Production Domination. Unfortunately there wasn't much demand for it and we'd need to buy some serious equipment just to teach the class, so it never happened. But finally someone listened to me and is looking into it- apparently theres no one on the entire east coast certified in this stuff so it might just be worth our while. They asked me if I'd like to get certified and obviously I said yes.
Now I just need to make more room in my office...
Medieval Manor is Thursday, December 17th. PayPal me $30 no later than next friday, November 20th.
Medieval Manor has suddenly changed their schedule. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday shows are ONLY private shows now. They're $32.50 including full tip and parking which is a good deal- But there's no way we can book 75 people. We worked our butts off 2 years ago and only got 53. SO, guess what, change of plans. Unless an overwhelming number of people can give me a better idea in the next 24 hours, the new date is THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17th at 7:45. Why Thursday? Because Friday and Saturdays are $40. Thursday is $30.
If you already Payed- Gary, Alison, Amy, Adam, Warren, Alex Savitzky, Jonathan- let me know if this date is okay or Ill send you your money back. Or if you could get someone else to pay you cash for your slot that would be great, it would save me the PayPal fees. (I knew I'd end up getting screwed SOMEhow again this year :) )
The rest of you- if you want in, same as usual- paypal me $30 (yes the price went up. poo.) no later than FRIDAY NOVEMBER 20th. Let me know if you need a veggie meal or youre under 21. Guests are welcome and encouraged. Come one, come all, huzzah, whatever.
Microsoft has a HUGE job, getting Windows to run on the plethora of platforms out there, and support for legacy apps and hardware. Its a monumental task and I think they perform ably. Win7 is looking pretty good and I'm looking forward to trying it. its just the little things that aggravate me- little things that I've taken for granted for ages on the Mac, that can't be done on Windows. I'm sure there are plenty of things like this going the other way, too- for example, SMB used to be a joke, setting up a printer required three different windows in 3 different places, and it wasn't until 10.5 that you could partition a Mac without erasing the whole drive. Yeah, really.
I expect a lot of it is the nightmare that is patent law, but some other stuff just seems lazy. For example, do you still need to know these cryptic codes or open up a palette (if your app supports it) to type special characters? On the Mac, you just use the option key: option-8 for •, option-; for …, option-r for ®. Accented characters are easy too- for an accent, type option-e, then the letter you want accented. Like option-e e for é, option-e a for á.
ā é ʼi ø ü ç ñ … I can do this all day people!
Another thing, and this one is paraphrased from ArsTechnica, on searching for files: For example, if you want to search by last-modified date, you have to know that the search tag is "datemodified:". Type that in, and you get a nice little calendar to pick a date, as well as special terms like "a long time ago". Similarly, if you know that the magic tag is "size:" you can pick a range of sizes from "empty" to "gigantic". That's great if you know the magic tags, but there's a hell of a lot of magic tags that I don't know. What I want is something discoverable and explorable, so I can find the different criteria, rather than just leaving me on my own to guess at them. A few example tags are provided (and these are context-sensitive, so if I search my music folders, it suggests tags like artist and album), but there's no intuitive way of figuring out what tags there are.
On the Mac, you just open the search box, and click a + to add as many criteria as you want, and use "all" or "any" to filter the criteria. Like this:
Is that not enough criteria for you?Than just choose "Other…" and you get:
I don't have nearly enough room to show you them all, but this short list should give you a good idea of how meticulous metadate searching on MAC OS X is. Its nuts. AND, with smart folders, you can save your granular search and come back to it any time.
Why can't the most powerful software company in the world add better searching?One more thing that has ALWAYS bugged me about Windows is the inconsistency in the GUI. The Mac gets criticized, and I can see why some people would not like this, for being to controlled and closed off. You cant customize it yourself, you can't (easily) skin it and developers must adhere to very strict UI guidelines. But at the end of the day, that makes the OS more consistent, and consistency leads to productivity. App developers can do anything they want with Windows apps and the result is a mess- its like a Turkish bazaar of mismatched interfaces. And no one is guiltier of this than Microsoft themselves! That's what drives me nuts. Pick an interface and stick with it, guys. Apple had this same problem for awhile but they're getting their act together. The Mac OS is clean, silver, sleek- it reminds me of a clean industrial kitchen, with everything in it's place. Its light and airy and just pleasant. Windows with all its bold primary colors reminds me of a kindergarten playroom. Yeah, Im just this is mostly just me, and what I'm familiar with. But even if you like Aero, or whatever they're calling it now, you can't disagree that there is too much inconsistency in the window GUI.
A paragraph in Ars Technica's Russian-Novel-Length review of Win7 sheds some light, at last:
Windows adds UI capabilities and then Microsoft software fails to use it properly, resulting in an inconsistent experience and leading one to question why Microsoft even bothers adding new features and guidelines if they're not going to be used. He told us at the time that the reason for this is that within Microsoft, the software that sets the UI standard isn't Windows, but rather Office; if the Office team's UI rules don't match up with Windows' UI rules, then the Office team prevails. He did tell us that the Office team was involved in the new UI features of Windows 7, and so I hope that in the future there will be closer alignment between what Microsoft says you should do, and what it actually does. I'm not going to hold my breath, though, because interface consistency is not something the company has ever been good at.
I've talked enough, and I gotta go. ciao.
Medieval Manor is Monday December 7th. Please PayPal $29 to me no later than November 13th. Let me know if you have guests under 21 or want a veggie meal.
7,000,000 people bought Yanni Live At The Acropolis. That right there should be enough. But let's go on...
13,000,000 people play World of Warcraft.
13,800,000 watched Big Bang Theory last week. (which makes me wonder what that extra 800,000 plays. Lord of the rings online? Guild Wars?)
50,000,000 Americans have herpes.
Approximately 53,000,000 are allergic to cats
60,000,000 of you assholes play farmville.
See, when you put it in perspective, Bill O is right where he belongs- the fringe. Don't let big numbers skew your perspective and assign undue importance to people who don't deserve it.
When you land on a colored property, you get to pick which property of that color you actually want to stop on. In other words, if you land on Vermont Ave, you actually get to stop on Vermont, Oriental or Connecticut.
For starters, it makes the game start faster, because eople will be able to shift to empty properties and buy them up more quickly. But once most of the squares are bought, this is where it gets interesting. Because if one person owns Oriental, another person owns Vermont, and a third person owns Connecticut, they can bargain with you on the rent, and compete for your business. You're going to move to the square with the lowest rent. But if someone has a monopoly and owns all three, they can gouge you and charge you anything you want.
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