Return of the linkage

The content has been a little on the light side for a while here, but I have a good excuse. I’ve been frantically trying to help my dad put together his doctoral thesis and it’s been taking all of my time at night. I might just have to rant about the uselessness of MS Word 2003 one of these days, man oh man for software that’s supposed to make things easier we sure wasted enough time getting all the formatting and what not working. Anyway, as I’m at work I’ll keep this short with some interesting links:
My Milenko brother Bubu has a list of things that Bush forgot to mention in his State of the union address. Very interesting read.
Do plants act like computers? An interesting theory explaining the behaviour of plants.
Now for something a little lighter (or do I mean higher?)- the Marijuana-logues. Pretty funny.
Finally, something that I could probably use – A video game controller that doubles as exercise equipment. Cool!

Every blogger and their dog

As opposed to giving my inexpert analysis of Bush’s state of the union address, I’ve decided to post a few sayings from my zen day calender (which I bought yesterday). I mean how many people have already mentioned his militant unilateralism, his reunification of Church and State, his anti-gay mentality and his drug testing at schools. I’m just another guy, not even an American.
Without further ado:

Continue reading Every blogger and their dog

Concerning Hats

I would like to post a longer entry but it’s 4:35 and I’m drunk, high and very tired. I’ve gambled my fedora on a fellow named Chevy’s ability to recover his leather cap that went missing. I love my hat but I have faith that his will be returned, but if it doesn’t I will give up mine in exchange (he seemed to like it). I met a lot of interesting women tonight. They seemed interested in my idea of handing over the torch of power to the female half of humanity, and yet they weren’t attracted to a completely passive, non-manly man. In my opinion that kind of male is what it’s going to take for us to live in relative harmony with the rest of the world, and yet they weren’t satisfied with that passive idealistic, non-agressive male. I guess what it comes down to is we have a job to perform as protectors and if they didn’t feel that duty is being fulfilled they aren’t interested in furthering that relationship. I say however that we as the dominant male species have to give it all up or none at all, so it becomes an interesting dilemma of sacrifice. Who’s willing to give up what in order to save humanity.
I was at a great party and I met a lot of people. As a great believer in communication I spent the majority of the party talking to different people. I enjoy my job as an ambassador of dynamic quality but it can be taxing and overwhelming as well. When you enter a room and everybody is searching for common ground, providing that focus can be a strenuous and involving commitment of self. Alcohol and drugs are my social lubricant so somehow I survive. If only the weed didn’t interfere with the natural selection process. I find myself unable to speak at any depth to the people I’m most interested in speaking to, and end up talking of frivolties and not important ‘relationship’ topics. I suppose it’s my fear of public displays, somehow the dirty secret of my lack of experience will become a mocking conversation and I can only retreat in embarassment. So hesitiation and fear are my biggest obstacles, and yet I would be most comfortable confronting thorny ‘relationship issues’ in a private, one on one domain. But that’s just me.
Wow, that was as close to a pure brain core dump as I’ve ever acheived. It probably doesn’t make any sense whatsoever but I’m tired and my bed, ooooh it calls.

Evolution and the Internet

What has always fascinated me about the internet is it’s constant evolution. From all the way back to the email and newsgroup days to the invention of the world wide web and HTML, there has always been innovation and progress in the software and the underlying mechanisms that provide the content which makes the internet such an incredible playground for so many people. I often regret not investigating it more while I was in high school instead of waiting until my first year of university in 1995 before I really jumped into the fray. I was there before mp3s and napster though, and signed up with hotmail before it was bought by Microsoft. ICQ was the premier (read: only) instant messenging service and you could still download software illegally from webpages. Ah the good old days.
Things have changed, and yet the underlying themes of evolution is still what makes the internet such a chaotic and upredictable entity. As people add new ideas and new software the complexity always increases and more people buy in. I have an idea (well really a modification of an idea) that I think would put the power back in the hands of the individual, which is I believe a fundamental strength of this CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet.

Continue reading Evolution and the Internet

Faith

I love TGM. To anybody who doesn’t play video game or even most who do this forum will mean absolutely nothing to them, however as I’ve gotten to know these people over the years what I most often enjoy are the religious and philosophical debates from perspectives all around the world. It’s a bit of a drift from the ins and outs of the SOF2 Demo, but it passes the time when you can’t play, or are not in the mood. What follows is a comment I made in a thread that started about Pork.

Continue reading Faith

That old chestnut

I love my referral logs. Basically it’s a narcissistic practice but it’s also the fuel that fires my creative juices. 21 grams is certainly generating a lot of traffic for me but more importantly a fresh supply of comments for me to digest. It was recently posted in this Philosophy Forums discussion, which hasn’t been as insightful as I would have hoped yet nonetheless the board looks very promising. I may have to switch from TGM to this new one, if I can find time again.
One of the comments in the 21 grams thread led to the old question of does a tree make a sound if it falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it? A lot of people seem to give up on this question as it seemingly comes down to semantics, however I think that there may be an answer and I’ve attempted it here.

Continue reading That old chestnut

While we’re on the subject of politics…

Here’s a couple of really good political links to digest:
George Soros delivers a withering but rational rebuke of the Bush Administration. He’s a multi-billionaire banker who has been very critical of the current administrations foreign policy, and it sounds to me like he knows what he’s talking about. You’ll have to keep an eye out for this one as the world get’s shifted to an information economy.
Washington Hawks urge more war. Pushing for military blockades of North Korea is just one of the ideas in their “manual for victory”. I’m *so* very glad to hear that the man with his finger on the button is listening to these hardliners. Makes me feel much safer.
Bush’s ‘volunteer’ enviornmental plan has little to no effect. Three cheers for Bush’s devote devotion to the environment! I guess he really is trying to save our planet.

Oh the linkage!

The power of the internet is forged with hyperlinks. Google capitalized on it but now it’s the bloggers time, time for the direction of traffic to be based on premeditated linking. As more and more people link to an article or site aggregator sites (like Daypop and Blogdex) pick up that multiple people are linking to the same thing and bubble up that article. This creates a sort of chain reaction once it reaches a critical mass – and then a meme is started and everyone (at least us news fiends and bloggers) soon knows about it.
Why is it important to link to things you agree with? Because if you agree with it, then you value that person perception, and theoretically you would like others to agree with you as well. The power of linkage the power of the internet. Why am I going on about linkage? Well I read an interesting article on WiredOpinion.com about calls for someone to critique a Glenn Reynolds’s recent post on U.S. foreign policy regarding Palestinians. Instapundit is a powerful soap box and when he writes people listen and believe him. Jonathan has written excellent critique of Glenn’s rather short sited and irrational ‘call to arms’. If other people link to Jonathans piece then maybe it will reach the critical mass I was talking about earlier and come to the attention of Instapundit. It requires a communal effort but it’s often worth it, especially with matters of profound importance like people’s perception of the Palestinian people.
While I’m at the linking game I may as well direct your attention to C. C. Keiser, yet another goodie found on my 21 grams thread. This fellow has some interesting views on something he calls Poly-Solipsism which I agree with pretty strongly. It’s interesting when people can reach the same conclusions – does that validate them or just exemplify universal insanity? Who knows.