A semi-personal description of myself and my understanding of how the world works. If you're interested in politics, social commentary, science, culture jamming and general rabble rousing you'll find it all here, in disjointed, rambling passages. I'll leave it to you to determine if I have anything insightful to contribute.
I have very few useful skills. It's true. My one true strength is that I have the internet equivalent of ADHD. I am constantly peeking in some of the weirdest corners of the internet.
I recently came across some YouTube homemade videos of one of my most favorite Canadian groups, the Arrogant Worms. So many of their tunes are clever, funny and self-deprecating about being Canadian. This particular video is (I believe) and actual produced by them video of one of my favorite songs. Listen, and laugh. I know I do :)
I just had a revelation! The cliche on gun control on the right has been: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people". I've always had a problem with that simplistic bumpersticker. But to take this idea at face value, I think I've come up with a way to actually make this acceptable to my ethos. Let's allow American to own guns but not allow people to be American.
Having started as an Apple head, moved to windows because of necessity and slowly been moving to Linux for philosophy, I've lived the desktop metaphor almost my entire computer literate life. It made sense, it makes sense. It was a great way to get novices comfortable with interacting with technology and integrate it into our everyday life. There are very few hardcore purists who prefer the "command line" to get things done and I admire them for that but being a visual thinker (when I try to understand or explain things to others I'm always thinking about how to represent the idea in a visual form - diagrams, pictures, cartoons, motion, flow). The desktop metaphor was my kind of interface and not nearly as intimidating.
However, it can be argued that today the metaphor is being stretched beyond usefulness and may actually be hindering and limiting our ways of thinking about information, life and that all important human element of social interactions. To be fair, the desktop GUI was developed during a period of time when computer resources were at a premium and you you usually took a performance hit to implement this approach. The serious gain in productivity from the intuitiveness of the interface made up for this hit big time though. Any improvements in the desktop metaphor since introduced my Apple in 1984 have been largely cosmetic or incremental (in my opinion).
I just came across this post over @ slashdot that really got me excited. Finally an GUI that updates the desktop metaphor to more closely resemble your real life desk with all the benefits of individual, idiosyncratic organizational techniques we all use and the ability to rapidly organize, prioritize and reorganize in a more systematic fashion. I found this 5 minute talk on the "bumptop" really cool (and will be checking it out over Xmas:) )but there are other excellent ideas that can be looked at here. Enjoy!
Today is my lucky day. I get to combine two of my favorite pastimes: Politics and cycling. I find the clip below absolutely hilarious.
Now to put all my cards on the table, I am neither a republican nor a democrat. In my opinion they are essentially the same party with minor variations around the edges and the fact that it is next to impossible to get a third party into US federal politics is a crying shame.
If I was forced to pigeonhole myself I would probably say that I fall pretty close to anarcho-syndicalism. Just not a big fan of so few people making so many important decisions that affect so many. Also, the other sad fact is, while I love politics, I can't vote. I'm Canadian.
Yes, I am a member of the secret cabal that pulls the strings of cultural power (What? Canadians? Yes. I merely point you toward people and shows such as: John Candy, The Kids in the Hall, Car Poolers, Jim Carrey, Peter Jennings, SNL, William Gibson - the orginator of the term cyberspace [although to be fair he's originally from the US but his ground breaking novel neuromancer was conceived and written in Canada]. I could go on but I think I've made my point.
Now I also have to fess up and take some responsibility for the "gentleman from North Carolina". He does represent my adopted state and I obviously let this guy through the cracks. I should have been more vigilant. He truely is an embarrassment to the state and for that I apologize. Clearly he's been hitting the moonshine a little hard lately and does not have all his faculties together in one spot. The one he's using during this speech is apparently the "I can speak with no logic" faculty. A rarely used faculty but an important one- especially at drunken frat parties. All the words and sentences may be grammatically correct (tho' I am being generous here) but they make no sense. I think he might actually have Wernicke's aphasia.
Watch the clip and I'll actually write about cycling next.
Hmmm. Let's see. If I'm hearing Mr. McHenry correctly, cycling not only does not help the world's energy crisis and does nothing to alleviate global warming but, by choosing to bike to work instead on driving, it actually may send us down the path of global catastrophe by encouraging people to not buy cars, use public transit and reorganize society into self-sustaining units - bad for corporations, bad for America. Those darn crazy democrats. Little did I realize that the vast majority of the population of the world was actually deliberately harming American interests but using pedal power instead of "gas guzzling " (cliche I know) American made SUVs.
WAR I say! WAR! We must stop the war on terror and fight the real enemy... CYCLISTS!
Oh, by the way, in case you are a fan of Mr. McHenry or his ilk, this is my sad and sorry attempt at sarcasm and wit. I do not claim that is of the caliber of Johnathon Swift but with the decline of education in recent decades this may be the best I can do.
