Month: May 2011

Lady Gaga takes tea

That message, “Find out who you are and be it,” clearly means a great deal to her. Like any simple aphorism it can be made to sound naive or profound according to one’s point of view. I think I’m old enough to know when I’m being fobbed off, bullshitted, lied to or deceived. There was in Lady Gaga’s eyes and voice enough to tell me that whatever else she is, she is no fraud. The “messages” in her songs and albums, the calls to freedom and self-actualisation, the addresses she has made to the American military on the subject of their fatuous and hypocritical “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, the support she has shown for the dispossessed and marginalized in society may cause many to roll their eyes and make the obvious cynical observation that being a friend to the friendless is damned good business. Just look at the figures. Number 1 after number 1, record-breaking releases of singles and albums, record-breaking YouTube visits, record-breaking numbers of Twitter followers. Oh, sure, this is one smart cookie. There’s money to be had in self-publicity and the championing of the lonely ones out there.

Still not a fan of her music but I respect what she does a lot more now.

Molla Nasreddin

very courageous satire from central asia, a century ago.

Molla Nasreddin was revolutionary in many ways. In an era and a region where free speech wasn’t particularly encouraged, its authors boldly satirized politics, religion, colonialism, Westernization, and modernization, education (or lack thereof), and the oppression of women (Azerbaijan was surprisingly progressive on women’s issues at the time, granting women the right to vote in 1919—1 year before the United States). And with the majority of the population at the time illiterate, the magazine was a careful and clever blend of illustrations and text. And the text itself might be the most interesting of all: it was written in Azeri Turkish, rather than Russian, the language of their colonizers. The book’s editors had the unenviable task of sorting out the text: the Azeri alphabet, written with Arabic characters for nearly a millennium, was Latinized by Lenin in 1928, Cyrillicized by Stalin 10 years later, and returned to Latin following the fall of the Soviet Union.

Selfdriving regulation

The benefits of driverless cars are potentially significant. The typical American spends an average of 100 hours a year in traffic; imagine using that time in better ways — by working or just having fun. The irksome burden of commuting might be lessened considerably. Furthermore, computer-driven cars could allow for tighter packing of vehicles on the road, which would speed traffic times and allow a given road or city to handle more cars. Trips to transport goods might dispense with drivers altogether, and rental cars could routinely pick up customers… The point is not that such cars could be on the road in large numbers tomorrow, but that we ought to give the cars — and other potential innovations — a fair shot so that a prototype can become a commercial product someday. Michael Mandel, an economist with the Progressive Policy Institute, compares government regulation of innovation to the accumulation of pebbles in a stream. At some point too many pebbles block off the water flow, yet no single pebble is to blame for the slowdown. Right now the pebbles are limiting investment in future innovation.

cities could double with robotic cars, all else being equal.

Secure Firewall

For best effect install the firewall between the CPU unit and the wall outlet. Place the jaws of the firewall across the power cord, and bear down firmly. Be sure to wear rubber gloves while installing the firewall or assign the task to a junior system manager. If the firewall is installed properly, all the lights on the CPU will turn dark and the fans will grow quiet. This indicates that the system has entered a secure state