Brent Noorda's Blog

Apple expands its China market by 1 million overnight

2012-01-27T09:46:00.000-08:00

In a stunning game-changing announcement, proving once again that Apple is the world leader in business management and innovation, Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook declared:

As a company and as individuals, we are defined by our values. Unfortunately some people are questioning Apple’s values today, and I’d like to address this with you directly. We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain.

This morning the Apple board has agreed to distribute our on-hand cash, of about $100 billion, among the 920,000 Foxconn employees who make our amazing Apple products. That’s over $100,000 for each and every hard-working employee who put together the products that delight us. Put another way, we’ve just given them a 6,000% bonus over their $1,680 yearly salaries.

Within minutes of the announcement, a majority block of Apple shareholders began a lawsuit based on the legal concept Volumus Quod Pecunia, which roughly translates as “Hey, We want that money!”

Tim Cook responded to the irate shareholders:

We would never neglect our fiduciary shareholder responsibility. We are not paying $100,000 per Foxconn employee out of any sense of fairness, or out of the goodness of our hearts. We’re doing this because it just makes good business sense. We’re expanding our customer base.

Each of those employees can now, for the first time in their lives, afford to purchase the products they’re making. In fact, we’re pressuring Foxconn to mandate that every employee buy an iPad and an iPhone (although employees younger than 14 are required to get a parent’s permission).

One more thing: we’re mandating a reduced 90-hour workweek so our Chinese workers now have time to shop for Apple products. That’s how markets are grown.

Flush with Community Pride

2012-01-21T21:41:00.000-08:00

Off in the distance is the flame that burns all night on the local sewage treatment plant. Some call it "our eternal flame". Whatever you call it, it's something we as a community create together.

They say it takes a village. Come see the beautiful children.

Super Simple Job-Killing Calculator

2012-01-02T16:20:00.000-08:00

It seems like everyone is talking about job-killing this and job-killing that, but nobody gets into the specifics. Who is killing the jobs and how many jobs are they killing?

Who is killing jobs?

Find a business that is making a profit. That profit represents money the business is bringing in that is NOT being paid to any employees. So if you’ve found a company making a profit, you’ve found a job-killer.

Fortune has listed the top 50 American job-killing companies here (although instead of “job-killing” they use the euphemism “profitable”).

How many jobs are they killing?

Let’s say the cost of a full-time employee (including, wages, benefits, etc..) comes to about $60,000 per year (according to Department of Labor numbers referred to here and some guessing).

Here’s the super simple calculation to determine how many jobs a company has killed:

JOBS_KILLED = $PROFIT / $60,000

Using that formula, and Fortune’s list of job-killing companies, here’s a list of how many jobs have been killed by the top 20 American job-killing companies in 2010.

Company	# jobs killed
Exxon Mobil	507,667
AT&T	331,066
Chevron	317,066
Microsoft	312,666
JP Morgan Chase	289,500
Wal-Mart	273,150
IBM	247,216
Apple	233,550
Johnson & Johnson	222,233
Berkshire Hathaway	216,116
Proctor & Gamble	212,267
Wells Fargo	206,033
Coca-Cola	196,817
General Electric	194,066
Intel	191,067
ConocoPhillips	189,300
Citigroup	176,700
Hewlett-Packard	146,017
Google	141,750
Goldman Sachs	139,233

That’s 4,743,480 jobs killed by just the top 20 American companies.

What and where are the jobs being killed?

We’ve seen who is killing jobs, and approximately how jobs many are being killed. That part is super simple. To understand what jobs are being killed you have to know the particulars of the industry. I’m a Silicon Valley computer programmer, so I really understand only two of those companies in Fortune’s list of top-20 job-killers: Apple and Google.

It’s super simple to understand how Google kills jobs. Google is in the advertising business, and have by far the most efficient advertising model ever created. For every advertising dollar that goes into Google, an advertising dollar is not going somewhere else (where the advertising dollar would have been used less efficiently). In other words, each Google employee is replacing multiple people that used to be in the advertising business somewhere else (advertising agencies, advertising artists, pitchmen, newspapers, many levels of middlemen, and so on).

How Apple kills jobs is more complicated only because they’re in more businesses. The iPhone business, for example, is hugely profitable, which is just another way of saying it kills a lot of jobs. What jobs has the iPhone killed? Tons of jobs at Nokia, Motorola, RIM, and everyone else that were making an inferior mobile phone. For another example, Apple is also hugely profitable selling music through iTunes, and again by “profitable” I mean “job-killing” where the jobs are tons of people in the old music-supply chain who are now jobless (everyone from evil music industry executives down to the offbeat employees of record stores that used to exist in every mall and main street).

But aren’t profitable companies the top job creators?

Yes, profitable companies are the ones creating jobs. But for every one job created at profitable company A, there are probably about four jobs lost at companies X, Y, & Z. Again, taking Apple and Google as examples, they each employ about 1 person for every 4 jobs they’ve killed (Apple: 60,000 jobs created versus 233,550 jobs killed; Google: 31,000 jobs created versus 141,750 killed).

Lesson Learned: Do you want to create a profitable business? Figure out how to do something with one person that used to require five.

Why are these job-killing companies the same ones politicians praise as “job creators”?

Because politicians are stupid or hypocritical, or because they know we are.

How about this “tax repatriation holiday” to bring money in to create jobs?

Oh please, that’s hardly even worth a reply! (Who writes these idiotic questions?) These companies use shenanigans to sequester profits offshore, and then ask for a tax holiday to bring the money back to the US to “create jobs”? If the goal of these companies were truly to “create jobs” then they wouldn’t have those profits in the first place. If their true goals were both to create jobs and to avoid taxes on $1 trillion in profits, as they claim, then they would have hired $1 trillion in employees already, and their taxes on profits would be zero.

Who are you to pass judgment?

I’m not passing judgment. I’m just explaining economics and jobs in simple terms. As a computer programmer, I’ve written lots of code that has led to small teams being hired at the expense of large (inefficient) teams being fired. I’m a job killer. That’s why I’m paid the big bucks. I’m not against profit (especially my own), nor am I against replacing lots of workers with a few workers being more efficient.

I’m just against lying about what creates jobs and what kills them. Profits are generated by killing jobs. That's pretty simple.

Why I support SUPA

2011-12-25T09:15:00.000-08:00

I support SUPA. There, I said it. Bring on the hate.

In case there’s anyone left who doesn’t know, SUPA (Stop Underage Prostitution Act) is a U.S. congressional bill that purports to fight trafficking in underage prostitutes. SUPA would allow law enforcement to seek court orders against anyone accused of transporting, facilitating such transport, or accepting payment for, underage prostitutes into this country.

Proponents of the bill say it would prevent abuse of young girls while protecting the rights of 18+ working women. Opponents say it infringes free love, our rights, young girls rights, and will cripple the sex trade.

To tell the truth, I know very little about SUPA other than what I just cut-and-pasted from the first page of its Wikipedia entry. I’m leaning toward supporting SUPA mostly because I’m so tired of the vitriolic, reactionary, and self-serving responses of those who are against it. For example, this rant I just saw on reddit, from the CEO of LulzLita.com: “SUPA is ripe for abuse. Anyone could claim that an arriving ship holds a container of 13-year old sex-slaves and the SUPA police could use this as an excuse to slow or even prevent unloading of that ship into the free marketplace. Anyone could make such a claim--my competitors, troublemakers looking for a cheap laugh, the girls’ Thai parents wanting to renege on the sale--and the police would have to conduct a search for underage prostitutes, slowing the unloading of that ship, wreaking havoc on worldwide shipping, ending free trade, and destroying our economy. SUPA is a job killer. Worse, SUPA could delay my third round of funding for LulzLita.com.”

Another way to understand SUPA (without actually *reading* the legislation) is to look at those who are most against it. Many of the corporations shouting the loudest against SUPA *claim* that they’re against underage pornography, and that SUPA is just the wrong way to fight it, but they haven’t offered an alternative. I suspect most of these companies are really just afraid of losing the huge cash flow they get from facilitating underage prostitution. For example, the company fighting hardest against SUPA is Ogle, the giant search engine that most people use to locate young hookers. Or look at the latest anti-SUPA restrictions imposed by XXXCombinator, the incubator that twice a year takes a group of young people for 3 months and trains them to be, um, ahem, “entrepreneurs”. Are Ogle and XXXCombinator fighting the good fight, or are they just watching out for their bottom lines.

The most interesting case may be YoDaddy, which specializes in selling really really cheap licenses to pimps. Originally YoDaddy supported SUPA (due to pressure from pimps who didn’t want an influx of young girls to undercut the prices charged for experienced ladies) until the huge backlash from 10 gazillion underage prostitution startups forced YoDaddy to change its position.

I suspect that, fundamentally, our responses to SUPA, or anything that is a reaction to rampant underage prostitution, has very little to do with particulars of this piece of legislation. Both sides are over-reacting based on fundamentally different values. Either you A) think underage prostitution is bad and steps should be taken to prevent it, even imperfect steps, or B) think the world has changed and we need to just accept that there no longer is an age limit on prostitutes and anyone denying that fact is just badly in need of a new business model.

As for me, I’m torn. On the one hand, I’d like young kids to be encouraged to stay in school, develop healthy relationships with their families and their peers, and so on; but on the other hand, it would be nice to if I could break in a fresh young virgin every day for a couple bucks.

So in the end, I do support SUPA, but just barely.

self-portrait of the artist as a shakyface

2011-08-13T09:51:00.000-07:00

Because you can never get too much of me (right?) here's pictures I took with my iPhone...

while shaking my head in various ways...

taking advantage of the CMOS scanner...

which is slower on the iPhone...

than on most electronic cameras. That's one explanation...

the other explanation is...

that there's a tiny dose of LSD...

in every iPhone.

Here's a big raspberry for you.

These are pictures of my talented friend...

Mary-Anne...

with the shaky hands...

what they've done...

to her man...

those shaky...

hands.

More links on legal uses of your iPhone's slow rolling shutter:

Bonus: For your listening pleasure, this archipelago version of Mary-Anne's song:

Two Options for Carbon Sequestration

2011-07-17T12:51:00.001-07:00

"Carbon Sequestration" refers to storing the carbon from fossil fuels (e.g., oil, coal, shale, tar sands, natural gas) so that it is not released into the atmosphere.

There are two basic options for carbon sequestration:

Option #1: Extract the carbon-based fuels that are stored underground (through mining, drilling, fracking, etc...), build power and carbon-capture stations to break the carbon bonds and recapture them, then pump the recaptured carbon back underground for storage. Here's a graphic representation (as found on Halliburton's web site):

Option #2: Leave it down there. Here's a graphic representation:

Anyone taking bets on which option we'll select?

A Bazaar Plan to Bring Our Troops Home

2011-07-06T07:10:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago my phone started ringing a few times a day. I didn’t answer it, of course, because I never answer the phone (that’s just good policy: phones are for browsing the internet, not for talking). The ringing went on for a couple of days and on the third day the phone rang and I heard a voice coming out of it even though I never pressed the talk button, which was just freaky. I asked whom it is and how they could talk on my phone without me answering.

He said he was Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense, and that he has ways to get around a lot of technical barriers. I thought he was kidding about who he was until he started talking about the book I’ve been working on—he spoke about it in great detail so he’d obviously read the whole thing. What’s weird about that is I’ve been working on the book in private, in a personal Google Docs account, and nobody even knows I’m writing it. I asked how he’s able to read my private documents and he says he has ways to get around a lot of technical barriers, but that Google Docs is so easy to hack that he can hardly call it a “barrier”.

The book I’ve been writing in secret (or so I thought) is a critical history of the open source software movement, and is to be called “Open Source, Schmopen Schmource: The Triumph of Quantity Over Quality”. Mr. Gates was particularly interested Chapter 11, called “The Business Cases for Open Source: Turning Your Failure into Your Enemy’s Disaster”. Chapter 11 describes the two situations in which it makes business sense to concentrate on creating open source.

The first situation in which it makes business sense to open source your work is when you create something for free that is a crucial money maker for someone you don’t like. You have no hope, not even a desire, to be in their core business, you just want to deprive someone you don’t like of their oxygen. Google sums up this business case in their famous manifesto “The Meaning of Open” which says, basically: “if someone else is ahead in a market we don’t care about, then open source reams of stuff and give it away, but if it’s the one market where we actually dominate and make money then create some amazingly-transparent double-talk reason to keep it proprietary”.

Mr. Gates summed up the second situation in which open source makes business sense like this: “Chapter 11 is saying that when you’ve sunk all your money into a campaign, but see that there’s no possible hope of winning, the right strategy is not to admit defeat and withdraw but to instead claim victory and open source it. At West Point we used to call this ‘salting the earth,’ a whiner’s strategy, but ‘open source’ makes the same approach sound victorious. I think your book called it the ‘Eclipse’ model. I like the sound of that: Operation Eclipse.”

“I see where you’re going with this,” I said. “You’re not going to withdraw from Afghanistan, but you’re not going to continue the fight, either. You’re going to Open Source the Long War on Terrorism.”

“Exactly!” He said. “And invite the many eyes of Pakistan and Iran to join our Open Source community, to welcome them to the bazaar we have created, while we quietly ignore it and bring our troops home. The open source long war on terror will become their problem, not ours. I sincerely hope I can sell this to the O-Man while I’ve got time.”

I just read that Robert Gates has retired, but I see no mention in the news of any new open source policy at the department of defense. I guess ‘the O-Man’ didn’t like Mr. Gates plan. I wonder why not? Is using open source as a weapon too underhanded to become U.S. policy?

Twitter is NOT a complete waste of time.

2011-06-21T08:35:00.000-07:00

Proof:

Car Pushing: A cheaper way to get fit.

2011-06-14T08:23:00.000-07:00

You want to get healthier, so you join a gym at $20/month, go three times a week, and burn about 600 kcal on each visit.

Good for you!

But maybe you can do better… with math!

That gym is 5 miles from your home, and you drive the 10 miles (5 there and 5 back) in your 30 mpg car, thus using 1/3 a gallon of gas for the trip. Because gasoline contains about 31,500 kcal per gallon (see here), you’ve just used 10,500 kcal to go to the gym to burn 600 kcal.

You burned 10500 kcal to for a 600 kcal benefit. You’re silly!

If you’re getting 30mpg at 31500kcal/g, then you’re burning (31500/30) 1050 kcal/mile or about 0.6 kcal/yard. Push your car 100 yards and you’d burn 60kcal. Push your car the length of 10 football fields and you’d burn the same 600 kcal you burned at the gym.

So here’s a new plan. Instead of paying the gym each month, driving 5 miles there and 5 miles back 3 times a week, save your money (about $600/year in gym fees, gas cost, and auto depreciation) and instead just push your car a quarter mile down the road (about 5 football fields) and a quarter mile back to your garage. You’ll burn as many calories, save time and money, and I guarantee you’ll get to meet more of your neighbors.

Once again, better living through math.

You’re welcome.

[[Next week: The McDonald's drive-thru fitness plan.]]

If you’re smart, stay in school. Please.

2011-03-17T07:48:00.000-07:00

Hey kids, there’s a lot of shady characters these days giving bad advice that you should quit college and jump right into the startup game. They tell you you’ll learn a lot more that way. They tell you you’ll earn a lot more that way. They say you’ll be the next Gates or Jobs or Zuckerberg, none of whom finished college.

Don’t listen to them. The world needs yet another internet startup like it needs, um…, the five hundred internet startups that probably launched today before breakfast.

It’s true, what they say, that you’ll learn nothing in college applicable to creating the next Facebook or Twitter or Youtube. Those internet services are just computer software. Computer software is relatively easy. It should be no surprise when 12-year-olds write great software, because there’s nothing taught past sixth grade that is applicable to writing software, creating web pages, linking them to databases, and creating the next Facebook. So if you’re going to skip college to be a software entrepreneur then you may as well skip high school and middle school too.

Do you know which people fundamentally made the latest batch of internet services possible? Two, among many, are Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg, who won the Nobel prize for the quantum mechanical magnetoresistance effect, the discovery of which led to our ability to store huge amounts of data, which led to internet services economically storing a zillion useless photos, movies, and tweets. Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg are really smart. They changed the world in ways we’ve only begun to understand. They didn’t quit school to form a startup.

If you’re really smart, please don’t quit school. The world needs you to stay in school, study study study, and prepare yourself to change the world in ways that we really need change. Because we really need change.

Study biology, so you can understand how our bodies work and prevent diseases in future generations.

Or study physics and chemistry, so you can provide the future with clean and safe energy breakthroughs.

Or study psychology, and figure out why we think we need to use so much energy in the first place.

Or study history and sociology and politics, and figure out why we humans are so messed up that society after society are compelled to live beyond their means and, again and again, collapse in disease, famines, and war, so that maybe this times things can be different.

But don’t quit school and do a startup.

If you’re smart, stay in school. Please.

manhamsterfish

2010-11-04T20:54:00.000-07:00

Unauthenticated sighting of the elusive manhamsterfish.

Is it real, or another doctored manhamsterfish hoax?

Oh, the pure kinetic joy of the hamster, the liquid otherworldy embrace felt by the fish, and the silliness of man, together in one creature.

A Call for Term Limits for Actors

2010-08-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a tedious conversation I never want to have again:

[Pause the movie] "Who is she? That blonde woman, who is she?"

"I don't know. This is the first time that character appeared. Press play and we'll find out who she is and why she's carrying a huge gun."

"No, who is the actress? Where have we seen that actress before."

"I don't know. Can we just watch and find out who she's about to shoot?"

"Wasn't she the psycho killer in CSI, Miami"?

"Oh, right. She was brunette, not blonde, but I think it was Numb3rs."

"No, it was Bones. I'm sure of it. And she was definitely blonde."

"Right, but she was brunette in that episode of Law & Order. That one dude's crazy girlfriend, right? OK, press play now."

"Oh, wow, you're right. With dark hair she's the crazy glitter-soap lady."

"Yep. OK. Problem solved. Press play, please, for the love of god."

[play for half a second...pause] "I remember now. She was also that psycho real estate lady on NCIS?"

"No, that was that other actress: the lesbo girlfriend of that emo band's lead singer. They look alike because they both have a weird too-big mouth."

"Oh... right... OK, well anyway, we figured out who she is and it will stop bugging me." [Finally Presses play]

"Um... Could you rewind a little? I forgot what was going on."

A conversation just like it happens nearly every time a new character appears in anything. Over the course of my lifetime I will spend months, cumulatively, in a paused viewing limbo figuring out where we've seen some actor before. What a tragic waste of my life!

The solution is simple: TERM LIMITS FOR ACTORS.

Be it hereby decreed that no one is allowed to act in more than one Movie or TV Show in their lifetime. Get in, play the role, get out, and find a real job.

Thank you.

P.S. Exceptions may be granted to actors who play the same role again and again. I'm talking about you, Michael Cera.

Beware The Big Gold Lever Under God’s Right Hand

2010-06-20T16:23:00.000-07:00

My dog, Tzunami, nearly killed me today. She didn't mean to. She's a good girl.

I'd waited patiently for to her find the perfect grassy spot to do her "duty". Then, as I was bent over to clean it up she saw a goose poop nearby.

For this bizarre story to make any sense whatsoever you have to understand how much Tzunami loves goose poop. It's a delicacy to her. To me it's super duper yucky, but to her (and probably to the French) goose poop is a feast.

Anyway, back to the story. As I was bent over picking up her "duty", she lunged for a goose poop, wrapping her leash tightly around my neck and choking off my air supply.

Soon I felt myself floating skyward through a long tunnel leading to an infinitely bright light. I took one last look downward and saw my now-still body, a bit purplish, and Tzunami nearby smacking her lips in culinary delight. I was filled with an indescribable sense of love and well-being.

Then I found myself face to face with God. He was just like you'd expect. He sat in a giant throne, surrounded by a court of winged angels. "Welcome home, my child" he said in a booming voice comparable to a thousand thunderclaps.

I've prepared a lifetime for this moment: my encounter with God. I like to be prepared for life's special moments. For instance, when someone puts a helium balloon into most people's mouths it is a wasted moment because they don't know what to say. They're not prepared. But me, I'm prepared, I say "follow the yellow brick road," which I've determined is the perfect thing to say on helium. For my first meeting with God, I've also prepared the perfect statement: "Are you there God? It's me, Margaret."

"Ho ho ho ho," he boomed, and his court of angels teetered merrily along. "That was funny.... the first 10,000 times I heard it. I've no time for this nonsense." His laughter abruptly ceased, along with the tee-hees of His entire court. "It is time for you to Be Ye Here Judged!"

I noticed then that his right arm rested on a giant gold lever beside his throne. I also noticed below my feet what looked like a trap door. I barely managed to swallow a cry of fear.

"My Child, as your One True God I have given you a brain of almost incomprehensible complexity (incomprehensible to your tiny mind, in any case). In your Earthly life I provided no evidence of my existence, nothing except what you call 'Faith'. You will be eternally judged on your answer to this all-important question: In your life did you believe in Me? Despite the large brain I gave you, and the total lack of evidence for My existence, did you devote your life to serving Me, the All Powerful? Or did you abandon your True Father and instead serve the lesser beings of mankind?"

"Ummmm...." I said.

"ANSWER NOW, CHILD! DID YOU BELIEVE IN ME?!!!" But then, suddenly, his tone changed. "Oh, now is not your time. My bad..."

I felt myself instantly swept away from the Spot of Eternal Judgment. I knew at that moment that I wasn't going to die. It wasn't yet my time. But before plummeting back to my mortal body I grabbed onto a tuft of cloud, hid behind it as long as I could keep a grip, and watched the next person to be judged.

The next soul was that of a woman, who was apparently a very devout believer, for when God asked the Final Question, and she answered, "Yes, My Lord, I had faith, I believed in You, I worshipped You and devoted my life to Your service." God said, simply, "pity", and pulled on his throne-side lever. The trap door opened and she fell into what I then knew to be a pit of endless and eternal torment of fire, brimstone, anguish, pain, and eternal despair. The screams emanating from that trap door were infinitely worse than anything I've ever heard or even imagined.

I released my grip on the tuft of cloud and allowed my soul to reenter my body where the odor in my nostrils, of Tzunami's Goose-Poo breath in my face, was gut-wrenchingly horrible, bad enough to wake the dead (which it had done). Tzunami, worried about me, her best friend, had breathed her Goose-Poop breath of life into my face. She's a good girl.

----

That's all. That's the story of my very-eventful dog walk. It's not every day you nearly die, meet God, and learn the secret to avoiding eternal damnation.

I realize that my story might be a little hard to believe. Maybe you think I simply imagined the whole thing, being deluded by lack-of-oxygen and Goose-Poop-Poisoning, and so you will continue to maintain your belief in God. But is that really the gamble you want to take? Are you so sure you don't believe my story that you're willing to risk burning in hell for eternity as punishment for your faith and belief in God?

I like a good oil spill now and then.

2010-05-10T12:43:00.000-07:00

When I was about 9 years old I had a dream that I’ve never shared with anyone. This dream was transformative, it changed the way I look at everything we do. In the dream a wall of my house was given special powers so that I could walk through it and experience the world 40 years or so into the future. Some of the stuff I saw was cool, for instance, I could hold in my hand a thin, flat, handheld screen on which I could read color, animated comic strips. But most of the dream was disturbing because of the sudden contrast in how the world had change in 40 years. The sky was a slightly different color, the plants weren’t quite the same, and there were more people. What got to me most was that the air smelled different, not an extreme difference but a subtle difference only noticeable to someone who could suddenly jump 40 years in time and smell old air versus new air—the people of the future didn’t notice that the world smelled different because it had happened gradually, over 40 years. “What’s that smell?” I’d ask, and they’d say “I don’t smell anything.”

What I got out of the dream was this: the accumulated actions of billions of people have consequences they don’t see, and unfortunately will not see without a magical time-traveling wall.

The billions don’t see; but I see. When I turn on a light switch, a TV, or this computer, I see an oil or coal plant pumping through fuel, polluting the air, depleting resources, and I see it magnified billions of times and I see the world looking different and it smells different. When I drive down the road I see, in my rearview mirror, the ugly gas expand out of my tiny Metro tailpipe, and I see larger clouds of out of the tailpipes of the giant SUVs, and I see it all magnified around the world by a billion other drivers. When I look up at a plane in the sky I always see a dark trail of oil behind it—it’s ugly. I see similar things when I purchase stuff, discard stuff, warm up with heating and cool down with air conditioning. The thought of spawning offspring (and the generations that would follow) brought more visions than I could bear to see, so I had that possibility snipped in the bud.

And yet I turn on lights, and drive, and fly, and I feel awful about it. This seeing is a curse. I hate it.

So when there’s a good oil spill now and then, and oil leaks into the ocean, and beaches and fisheries are closed, and oil-soaked seabirds was ashore mingled with dead turtles, I get a sense of schadenfreude that warms my heart just a little and I think “there, now you all clearly see what I see all the time. Welcome to my world. Sucks, don’t it.”

As I write this, an estimated 5,000 barrels of oil are leaking each day from the latest oil spill, and people are upset over the environmental tragedy. But here’s the thing: if that oil well weren’t leaking that same amount of oil would still be going into the environment, it would just be going into the environment in ways that are more invisible (except to those of use who have had time-travel dreams). Instead of leaking into one relatively small location that is very visible, that oil would be spread around the world in diluted, much-less-visible leaks, in the form of gasoline, auto and power-plant emissions, fertilizer, food, clothing, plastic bags, lipstick, and on and on. It’s the same amount of oil, just spread around a lot so most of us don’t see it.

Think of the movie “The Great Escape”. The prisoners are digging a long tunnel under the prison, but how do they the dirt they’ve removed? They can’t just put a big pile of dirt somewhere, so they cleverly spread it all around the camp, one small handful of dirt at a time, slow and diffuse enough so the guards don’t notice.

That 5,000 barrels per day leak into the environment one way or another, right? 5000 barrels per day is a lot of oil. But at the current rate, worldwide, we extract oil from the ground (i.e. leak oil into the environment) at about the rate of 1,000 barrels every second. In other words, the recent news-headlining oil leak represents only 5 seconds (or 0.006%) of the world’s daily oil use. The other 99.994% of oil we extract every day is leaking from somewhere else that’s more diffuse and relatively hidden and far from our shores, and so we don’t pay attention to it.

That’s just oil. This morning’s news starts with another coal-mining-disaster-of-the-week story, with 32 killed in a Siberian coal mine and 58 still missing. Don’t even get me started on my coal visions.

I don’t know why it has taken me nearly 40 years to tell anyone about my dream with the time-portal wall. Maybe with some imagination you can imagine your own magic wall that lets you see how our actions today affect the world in 40 years. How does it look? What’s that smell?

Apple’s SDK brouhaha explained for non-developers (as if you care)

2010-04-11T15:32:00.000-07:00

I’ve got it in my craw to try to explain the current brouhaha behind Apple’s recent SDK changes. It’s a case of history repeating itself, so that a dominant platform can retain its dominance through bullying and complexity.

To understand this issue, you must understand the plight of every business that develops mobile applications. When planning to create an application for mobile devices, this is the conversation that happens at thousands of companies around the world, again and again:

Boss: We want everyone to be able to run our application, no matter what phone they use. Can you create an application that will run on all phones?

Engr: All the phones use different APIs (Application Programmer Interfaces). We can’t write one application that runs on all phones.

Boss: So write a different version of the program for each phone.

Engr: That would take 20 times as many developers as we have, probably one to concentrate on each phone. Can I hire 20 times as many developers?

Boss: No, we can’t afford to hire. So write the application as a web page. I hear web browsers are getting pretty powerful.

Engr: Yes, and very many smartphones are, or soon will be, running a similarly powerful HTML5 browser. But the HTML standard is always about 10 years behind the times in terms of supporting our needs for storage, media input, media output, GPS, compass, touch, tactile, and odor. We can’t do our app in HTML5.

Boss: So we’re back to writing a separate application for each platform. What can we afford to do; keeping in mind that iPhone is the device by which our company will be judged?

Engr: We can spend a lot of time making a really sweet iPhone version, and a little bit of time hacking together good-enough version for Android and Blackberry, then throw together some crap versions for J2ME and Palm and Symbian and Windows mobile.

Boss: Isn’t there some way we can write our application once, and run it everywhere?

Engr: Some way to “write-once, run-anywhere”? Hmmm… That question is beyond the scope of this little embedded dialog. Let’s return to Brent’s blog...

The nirvana solution for every developer with less-than-infinite time and money is to Write-Once, Run-Anywhere (WORA). In a WORA world, you would take the time to write application source code, then flip a switch and the WORA tool would compile that application into something that ran on iPhone, something that ran on Android, something that ran on Blackberry, and Pre, and on and on.

There are two ways to make WORA magic happen:

UBER-API: Translate an uber-API into something that runs on all platforms. The most well-known contender in this area is Adobe’s Flash (but there’s also Corona & Titanium & PhoneGap and others). With Adobe’s tools, a developer could write Flash code, then compile that same code into something that would run similarly on a wide range of phones.
EMULAPI: Create an API layer on all platforms that copies (or emulates) the API of another platform. To do this, one would emulate the X API on the Y Platform, so that code written for X could then be compiled to run on Y. For example, Google could write a tool to take the Objective-C source code of an iPhone application (possibly even the raw binary application), and run it on and Android via a compile- or run-time layer that emulates the iPhone API.

Every dominant platform (i.e. the platform that has the most developers creating for it) has fought to retain its dominance by preventing WORA. IBM did it with mainframes. AT&T did it with Unix. Microsoft did it with desktops. Now Apple is doing it with mobile.

Apple does not want to lose its dominance. Apple does not want WORA. Apple’s tactics to prevent WORA are the same ones used by IBM, AT&T, and Microsoft before it. These tactics are A) bullying, and B) complexity.

A: PREVENTING WORA THROUGH BULLYING

Much has been written this week about section 3.3.1 of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, which says, in essence, that no app will be accepted into the app store if it is originally created with a non-Apple API. For as long as Apple can get away with it, this bullying clause prevents WORA type 1: UBER-API. You can read here, here, here or here for more about this brouhaha.

B: PREVENTING WORA THROUGH COMPLEXITY

Apple also announced something else last Thursday that has not been much written about: They announced over 1500 new APIs. That’s 1500 NEW APIs, an addition to the approximately gazillion API’s already in the iPhone SDK.

Why is it so important for a dominant platform to have so many APIs, and for that API list to keep growing? Remember that the second way to achieve WORA is to duplicate the API of the dominant platform. If Apple wants to prevent this form of WORA (i.e. to prevent a developer from writing an app for the iPhone, but being able to then compile that same app to run on Android and RIM and other platforms) they need to keep their API large, complex, and always growing. This makes it hard for another platform to duplicate for two reasons:

The shear number of APIs means that a lot of engineers must take a lot of time duplicating those APIs.
With so many APIs will come even more bugs. Some small percent of code is going to contain bugs, even if written by the mighty geniuses at Apple. To duplicate Apple’s API well you must also duplicate the bugs, which is even harder than duplicating the APIs themselves.

So that’s what’s up with Apple this week. In short, they are now the dominant platform in a space, and they intend to maintain that dominant position for as long as possible by preventing the ability to write an application once and run it anywhere. Apple’s tactics for maintaining their dominance are: bullying and complexity. They’re the same tactics use by every computer platform dominator before them. All of this has happened before, and it will happen again. So say we all.

Apple’s 4.0.1 Developer License prohibits apps written by the left hand

2010-04-09T19:51:00.000-07:00

News Item: A small but vocal subset of developers across the web are registering their outrage at this change in Apple’s new iPhone 4.0.1 SDK license:

15.3.5 Applications must be written using only the developer’s right hand (e.g. applications written using the left hand, or partially written with the left hand are prohibited).

The primary reason for the change, say sources familiar with Apple’s plans, are to ensure quality of user experience, better multitasking, and longer batter life.

“A quality user experience is critical to the iPhone and iPad experience,” said Steve Jobs, who declined to specify if he was left-handed, right-handed, or bisexual. “Beautiful apps start with beautiful code. Our User Interface Imagineers have determined that the right hand, which is closer to the return key, produces more newlines, a cleaner source-code look, and, hence, more beautiful apps. Such code also extends battery life in a multitasking environment.” Jobs further explained that developers using their left hand to code are overly tempted to be masturbating with their right hand, or accidentally using too many words starting with letters from the left side of the keyboard, such as “Adobe”, “Silverlight”, “Flash”, or “Google”.

In a press release it was also announced that the Apple board has agreed to shorten Jobs’ lengthy title from “Chief Executive Officer” to just “Führer”.

Postcard from the Holy Land

2010-04-04T08:17:00.000-07:00

I love Peeps. I loooooooooove Peeps. No, that’s putting it too mildly (damn me and my low-key understated ways). I luh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-ove 'em.

Peeps are my rock. My foundation. This makes Easter the most significant day of the year. For you Easter may be just about bunnies and decorative hats, but for me Easter is almost a religious thing.

BTW, I’m not fanatical in my religion. I’m not like those cultish blaspheming schismoids who believe that Peeps come from Cadbury Eggs. That’s ridiculous. Peeps are immaculately conceived.

This Easter was supposed to be the greatest of all Easters. This is the year I had made my holy pilgrimage to seek the origins of those magic marshmallow treats. But…

Wow! Easter Island isn’t at all what I expected it to be. I thought it would be like CandyLand of the Gods. Turns out it’s an island (which I expected) without trees (which I did not expect) some really really big stone heads (which nobody would expect, because it’s just weird--I thought I had a big head, I always say it’s big enough for someone with at least twice my IQ, but these things are enormous) and, worst shock of all, ask around and no one will tell you where to find Peep Eden. They keep it a secret. Not a Peep.

To make matters worse, our group was stuck with a tour guide, named Ricardo, who was a complete, rude asshole. He was also just plain stupid: I mean, the guy could hardly even speak English. He’s from Chile, fer-chrissakes. North America, South America, whatever, it’s all America and he should learn to speak American gosh-darnit!!

I got nothing against Chile, mind you. I luh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-ove Chile. It’s my second favorite food (behind Peeps)—I don’t care if it’s with meat, without meat, chunky, hot, mild, marshmallowy… I love Chile. I was planning a pilgrimage next year to Chile, but this tour guide is such a jerk that I may cancel that trip.

I’m really starting to question my faiths.

Here’s a little taste of the tour, so you can see what a douchebag we had to put up with.

Guide: The ancient inhabitants of this land were known as The Rapanui, they once numbered over 10,000.

Me: Hold it right there, Rick, but that’s just BS. I happen to know that the inhabitants are called “The Peeple.” Also, there’s no way in hell 10,000 Peeple ever lived here. So no more bullshit, OK?

Guide: Some say as many as 17,000 at it’s height.

Me: Bull-Shit! Just look around, there’s hardly any food growing, hardly any trees, there’s no way 10,000 could live off this land.

Guide: Most experts say that the Rapanui deforested their land, causing their own population collapse.

Me: Oh my god, you’re one of those hippy environmentalists, aren’t you. Next thing you know you’ll start talking about climate change.

Guide: Yes, climate change in the 18th century probably exacerbated the deforestation. They simply used up their resources faster than they could be replenished. I believe the day came where a Rapanui individual, desperate for fuel, knowingly and willfully cut down their last mature tree.

Me: No way. Peeple weren’t so stupid as to use up their own food and fuel supplies faster then they could be replaced.

Guide: Tell me, sir, how did you get from your home to Easter Island?

Me: I flew. Took a few flights, actually, it was quite a hassle. I should have been upgraded.

Guide: Those planes used a lot of fuel. How quickly are you replacing the oil that was drilled to make all that fuel?

Me: I don’t replace the fuel. The oil companies do that. Duh!

Thankfully, we broke then for a box lunch the tour agency had provided. But pretty soon the guide was all up in my ass again:

Me: Excuse me. Could I have a real knife instead of this plastic stuff you gave us?

Guide: Good for you, sir, using reusable silverware instead of disposable, oil-based plastic. You have learned something, sir.

Me: Hell yeah, I’ve learned something. I tried to chisel off some pieces of that big stone head, to bring home as souvenirs, but these plastic knives don’t cut through shit.

Guide: grrrble grrblle grrrble (his English got so bad at this point that I couldn’t make sense of any of it)

So that’s my Easter vacation. A bit disappointing, eh? It just goes to show that people are the same wherever you go: there’s always some asshole trying to ruin things for the rest of us.

Actually, although I hate to admit it, the guide did have a point about maybe, possibly, the oil running out. Just in case he’s right (and I’m not saying he his) you should all get on a flight to Easter Island now, while you can, pronto, before the oil’s all gone. Those heads are ginormously big, you have to see them for yourself to believe them, and (thanks to the jerk guide) I wasn’t able to bring any pieces back to show you!

Bring a chisel.

Hopefully I’ll have a better time on my next vacation in a few months in Puerto Vallarta, where I plan to celebrate the 4th of July (although for some weird reason they call it “Sinko Day My Oh!”)

How to earn over $20 a year as a work-from-home blogger.

2010-03-31T08:46:00.000-07:00

Are you wondering how to earn money as a professional blogger?

Since beginning my professional blogging career three years ago, I have earned $63.63 through ads on my blogspot page. That’s over $20 a year. Working from home!

These are my tips for blogging your way to $20 a year.

Write infrequently - I average about 2 posts per month. In all of 2009 I posted only 9 times.
Be inconsistent about your subject matter - Do not stick to any one topic for your blog. One month write about politics, weeks later about your dog, months later about time machines. Once you write about some topic never revisit that topic (lest people start to think you’re an expert).
Use inconsistent voices - Sometimes tell the truth. Sometimes lie. Sometimes try to be funny. Sometimes try to be serious. Sound smart. Sound stupid. Use the voice of one person. Use the voice of a corporation. Remember, we can all have multiple personalities if we apply enough self-abuse.
Do not link to other bloggers - Adding links just takes effort and makes those bloggers aware of you as competition for those yearly $20. Do not try to figure out how those complicated Blog Trackbacks work: you’ve got better things to do with your time, like planning how to spend $20 every year.
Facilitate ad-blocking - If the above tips aren’t enough, and you are in danger of getting much more than $20/year through ads, allow RSS feeds and Facebook’s Notes to deliver your posts to readers without showing them the ads.

What are you waiting for? There's 2 or 3 readers out their eager to find out what you have to say. Get your blogging on!!!!

Next week, how to use social media to 1) enhance your personal brand, 2) I forget step 2, and 3) make millions!

Open Source, Schmopen Schmource

2010-02-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

Open source doesn’t make software great.
   Great code makes software great.
   Great engineering,
     and great design,
       make software great.

Weapons are evil.
                    open source
              used as a weapon
      is evil.

A word from our sponsor.

2010-01-25T12:48:00.000-08:00

Saving lives through better terminology

2010-01-05T15:12:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about the power of terminology, and how it can save lives.

Using the right term is so important. For instance, "sweetbreads" taste and sell a lot better than "pancreas & thymus" or "brains" or "offal".

In a debate, the side that controls the terminology has a huge advantage. For instance, when Bush's team was fighting the "estate tax" they weren't making much progress. But by redefining it as "death tax" they were able to make sweeping changes.

Terminology is something Tiger Woods has failed to understand. By allowing his actions to be labeled "cheating" he has already lost. Nobody likes a cheater. But had he framed the issue as one "love" he could have retained the moral high ground. How can anyone be against "love"? It's what the world needs now. Love is all we need. This is the speech Tiger should have given to retain his lucrative endorsement contracts: "Hello, I'm Tiger Woods, and if I'm guilty of anything it's that I love… too… much!"

In the abortion debate, the "pro-life" side has a semantic advantage over "pro-choice". They're both positive terms, but "pro-choice" has a touch of selfishness about it. "Planned Parenthood" is onto the right idea. The pro-choicers should instead use a term that takes the high ground: e.g., "pro-family".

"Drug war" is a good turn of a phrase. If "prohibition" ever replaces "drug war" then the war will be as good as over.

Bono was onto something this weekend when he almost used the term "file-swiping" instead of "file-sharing". As long as "file-sharing" is the debated term, artists' rights are lost. "Sharing" is such a nice, friendly term. It's hard to feel negative about "sharing". "Swiping" isn't as nice, but I don't think it goes far enough in conjuring negative images. Bono should instead replace "file-sharing" with a term like "artist-raping" because it better describes what's happening: forcibly taking pleasure from the artist without their consent, but without actually "taking" anything because the orifices are still there for the next artist-raper to do the deed. I can guarantee you that if "artist-raping" were to replace "file-sharing" the practice would end.

With a term like "global warming" the environmentalists have already lost: it's a warm term; it's fuzzy. "Climate change" would scare people into action if they knew what "climate" meant, but most people think it means "weather", and the weather changes daily anyway, so why worry?

"Universal Health Care"? That phrase is a disaster. Joe Schmoe doesn't care about health care for everybody else, he only cares about health care for himself. I don't know a better term. Anybody?

But enough trivialities. It's time to take what we've learned about words and save some lives. How many people die because "killing spree" is such a fun, fun term. Suppose your friend calls and says "hey, wanna go on a killing spree this weekend?" for at least a split second you're going to think "yeah, that sounds like fun." Let's do away with "killing spree" and replace it with something that sounds less oogly-boogly joyful, such as "murderous rampage". I don't know about you, but if my friend asked me to spend my weekend on a "murderous rampage" I'd say "no, how about if we just watch the game" with no hesitation at all.

Can we all agree? No more "killing sprees"?

Why Apple laptops cost more: The power connector.

2009-12-29T07:21:00.000-08:00

We went to Fry's Electronics today to look for a new laptop or netbook, as we do every couple of years. I was astonished (as I am every couple of years) at how cheap these things are.

Except for the Apple laptops. Apple laptops cost about $450 more than comparable Windows machines.

I examined every single laptop on display, about 50 of them, to determine what would make an Appple computer worth $450 more than a Windows system. It's not the software (I use both, and other than a pretty spinning ball Apple's got nothing on Windows). It's not the lack of a right mouse button (or even a left mouse button), I'd be willing to pay Apple a little extra to put a right mouse button in.

It's the power connector. Apple can charge an extra $450 because they're the only computer brand that makes a decent power connector. It doesn't flop around. It doesn't break. It's got no moving parts.

Every goddam Windows machine I examined had nearly the same flimsy power connector, one you can feel wiggling around inside, and you just know that after connecting and disconnecting 5 times a day (the national average I just made up) it's mean time to failure is going to be 174 days (a figure I just made up based on experience: on both of our last two Windows laptops, that power connector was the first thing to fail).

Apple can charge an extra $450 because of its power connector.

So here's a billion dollar idea for the some bright Windows brand: make a better power connector, spend an extra 50 cents on it if you have to, then charge a $450 premium. The first manufacturer to do this will bring in an extra $1 billion dollars of pure profit in the first year (plus or minus twenty bucks, if the sales, stocking, manufacturing, legal, and shipping numbers I just made up in my head are correct).

You're welcome.

In praise of Douglas Crockford, genius

2009-12-17T18:18:00.000-08:00

We don't spend enough time praising the genius inventors who make our lives so much better, especially while they're still alive. How I regret not sending praise to Norton Buffalo, inventor of the Buffalo Wing, before his recent passing.

So today I praise Douglas Crockford, who gave us JSON(.org) as a way to share data between computer systems.

Back in the day, there used to be a lot of pressure to use a complex XML format any time you wanted to send data between one computer and another. More time was spent writing and debugging XML parsers than really getting work done, and when person A's program didn't work with person B, more hours would be wasted arguing over who got the XML wrong.

Meanwhile, anytime a real programmer would informally talk to another, they'd scratch out on a whiteboard some pseudo-code that looked like simple programming notation. If there were no suits around they might even program their systems to work directly with the pseudo-cody-looking text (bypassing XML altogether because no authority figure was watching).

But whenever a manager or committee got involved they would insist that XML be used because it was "the standard" and how professionals did it. You could argue until you were IBM-Blue in the face about the easier approach, but you'd know that the argument would get nowhere, and you'd just cave in and do the XML.

Until one day Douglas Crockford had his stroke of genius. He created the name JSON for this sourcy-looking data notation, and, most importantly, he created the website JSON.ORG.

From that point on, when someone would insist that you work in XML, you could say "I prefer JSON, it's an accepted standard" and you could point them to the JSON.ORG website saying "See, it's got a .org website and everything."

End of problem.

And that's what a genius does: Ends problems. Thanks DC.

P.S. I don't really know if any of the above is true, and don't feel like taking the time to do any fact-checking, but it's one of my favorite stories so I'm sticking to it.

Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia

2009-10-25T15:41:00.000-07:00

We found a spell on Wikipedia for undoing the hex that turned our doggy into a pumpkin. It didn't work as advertised. Now poor Tzunami is a cake. She looks delicious. We better find a way to undo all this black Halloween magic soon, or she's in danger of being eaten.

Got milk?

Pumpkin Dog

2009-10-25T10:57:00.000-07:00

Some kind of Halloween magic turned our doggy, Tzunami, into a pumpkin. Very sad, scary, and man-bear-piglike all at the same time.

My first video mashup.

2009-07-08T07:36:00.000-07:00

I just got new video editing software, and I’ve spent all day learning to use it.

My first project is a mash-up of dozens of Sarah Palin speeches, carefully spliced together to look like one seamless press conference. By merging so many different statements, taking them totally out of context, and then recombining them in a completely random order, I’ve managed to make Sarah Palin look like a total idiot who speaks in incoherent non-sequiturs.

The result of my cutting-edge video editing is hilarious, if I do say so myself. Witness:

Feed the world? Or not? A moral quandary.

2009-07-07T08:41:00.000-07:00

When I retired two years ago, I planned to enjoy my time the same way many other retirees do: by starting a garden. In a small patch of land I set out to grow enough fresh food to feed Amy and myself. La la la, oh happy times.

Turns out it’s a lot of work growing food. With one problem after another, I never could grow enough to feed us (now you know the secret to our slim figures). I was feeling bad about myself for my failure. What was I doing wrong? I knew that we had at least as much land and water and fertilizer as a small family farmer anywhere in the world did—a family of five in Somalia, for example. How do they feed themselves when I can’t? Hmmph!

So I jealously looked into their secrets for gardening success, and it turns out they don’t have any. Their secret is to go hungry, or fight their neighbors, or become pirates, or die.

I looked into the issue some more, and found out some unpleasant things. For instance, there are currently about a billion people going hungry. Each year about 8 million people die directly from hunger, and many times that number are dying indirectly from the results of food shortage: everything from weakened immune systems to shortage-based civil wars to atrocities going under the name of ethnic cleansing.

How was I supposed to enjoy my retirement with so much suffering going on? What a bummer!

So for the past couple of years I’ve been working on solving the world hunger problem. In that time I’ve developed “fertibeaux”. Fertibeaux is both a fertilizer and a sequence of cultivation techniques that can greatly increase the productivity of almost any kind of land (I’m leaving out the technical details of fertibeaux for reasons that will become apparent shortly). With fertibeaux, an acre of good soil can easily produce enough food to feed ten families (25 if they are vegetarians). Even under the worst conditions (sandy, alkaline soil fed with scant, salty water) fertibeaux, and a lot of hard work, can grow a lush crop that would put a Kansas cornfield to shame.

These two years of development and experimentation have convinced me that with fertibeaux we can easily feed our world of 7 billion people ten times over. No problem. We could feed 70 billion. No problem.

No problem?

Then I saw the problem. Just as I was about to publish my fertibeaux results, gleeful that I’d solved yet another worldwide catastrophe and could finally enjoy my retirement in peace, I saw the problem: Because we will be able to comfortably feed 70 billion, I’ve no doubt that the population will quickly balloon to 70 billion. It should take about 100 years. It might be a tad unpleasant then, with so many humans filling the land that there won’t be much space for any other species. But so be it. Most of those species are already doomed anyway.

The problem comes when we’ve depleted the most important natural resource that is fundamental to fertibeaux (and which I’m keeping a secret), which should happen in, oh, about 100 years.

The way I figure it, here’s what happens if I release my secret fertibeaux: world hunger is solved; next year 1 billion people will be saved from suffering, as will many billions for the next century; 100 years from now there will be 70 billion people happily living on fertibeaux-based crops, then they’ll run out of fertibeaux; 101 years from now most of those 70 billion will die of starvation (although the exact causes of death will be listed as “disease” or “civil war” or “ethnic cleansing” or “biofuelicide”).

So here’s my ethical dilemma. Do I release fertibeaux now, and so relieve suffering for 1 billion people next year and many years after that? Or do I destroy all knowledge of fertibeaux and save the lives of 70 billion people 100 years from now?

Retirement is ethically challenging.

The Big Bank Theory

2009-03-26T09:40:00.000-07:00

Timmy tossed another brick of dollar bills into the fire pit, as the rest of the boy scouts huddled together for warmth. “Next time it’s someone else’s turn to get fuel for the campfire.”

“I was just thinking. Do you ever think we’ll run out of dollars to burn?” asked Kyrell. Kyrell was always asking questions like that. He asked a lot of questions, but never gave answers unless he knew the answers. He was weird that way. Nobody liked him. “I mean, look around, they’re everywhere. We burn them whenever we want. Last week they clogged the sewer so bad the water ran out…”

“I didn’t have to take a bath for a week,” shouted Mofanda, the funniest girl in the boy scout troop, and everyone laughed, except for Kyrell who was still puzzling through his question.

“Nobody makes dollars. They don’t grow on trees. So we’ll run out of them someday, right? Where did all these dollar bills come from?”

The scouts sat silent for a minute as they pondered. This was a rare silence, and pondering was a rare activity, but Kyrell had asked a rarely good question.

“My grandpa told me, once,” said Shanto, shyly and quietly. It had taken her a full thirty seconds to convince herself to talk. “I asked him where the dollars come from. He said he’s an econonominist, and so he knows. Grandpa’s a very great man. And rich, too,” she was speaking louder now, filled with the pride of her grandfather, “he’s so rich he has over 10 billion followers! So he knows.”

“No one has 10 billion followers,” Timmy cut her boast down to size. “That’s over half of the entire planet.”

This quieted Shanto for a while, but Kyrell prompted here and so eventually she continued. “Well, anyway, he is awfully rich even if I don’t know exactly how many followers he has.”

“Grandpa told me about the dollars. He said that back when he was young dollars used to be money. You could buy things with them, even big things like houses. I thought that sounded silly, because that’s what followers are for, but grandpa said, ‘no, before we traded in followers, dollars where our currency,’ and I know it’s true because grandpa is an important econonomist.”

Shanto was quiet again, but everyone was staring at her, and she remembered she hadn’t answered the question yet.

“Grandpa said they used to keep the dollars in banks. Great big banks. Bigger than from here to that Gatorade tower. But there was a secret the banks weren’t telling people. They actually didn’t have the dollars they said they did. One day the government realized that those giant banks where just giant empty buildings, with hardly any dollars in them at all.”

“So where’d all the dollars come from?” asked two or three scouts at once.

“Grampa said it was a crisis. The banks would fail if they were just big empty buildings, and the president and everybody said they were too big to fail. So they had to fill those big banks with money, ‘cause grampa said ‘nature absorbs a vacuum.’ The government went to work printing dollars and stuffing them into the bank buildings and I guess it was like when you blow up a balloon too fast because the banks ruptured and dollars flew everywhere and just made a big mess. So that’s where all the dollars come from!” Shanto pressed her lips and pretended to blow her nose on a twenty she found on the ground so the others couldn’t see how much she was beaming with pride.

The topic of conversation quickly changed to latrines and teleweb shows and other things of importance to scouts. Kyrell didn’t join the conversation because he was deep in thought over what Shanto had said. Eventually Kyrell interrupted an argument over whose dad had more followers, and blurted: “That doesn’t make sense. If dollars where flying all over the place, and dollars where their form of currency, then everyone would have way too many dollars and they would be useless. It doesn’t make sense. What good are dollars if there’s so many of them that they blow up the banks and are blowing around everywhere?”

Nobody liked Kyrell, and his stupid thoughtful questions. So they grew silent and looked at Shanto so she could put him in his place. It took a few minutes for her to get over her shyness again, but they were patient, and they really disliked Kyrell.

“Grandpa told me about this, too. He said that by the time the gigantic banks blew up, dollars were already worthless and the world had stopped using them anyway. China, who owned most of the dollars that hadn’t really been there so I don’t know how they owned them but they did, were the big bosses then and China said the world needed a new worldwide currency. Everyone agreed and, naturally, everyone started using followers.”

That made perfect sense to everyone, even Kyrell.

"Congratulations. You now understand the stimulus bill."

2009-02-23T07:46:00.000-08:00

There's an email named "Congratulations. You now understand the stimulus bill." working it's way around the web and in blogs. There's one version here. The condensed version is this: An economics student asks his professor to explain the stimulus bill. The professor teaches by example as he has the student take one bucket after another from the deep end of the swimming pool to the shallow end, accomplishing nothing.

But that's not the full story. In passing from inbox to inbox this internet meme has somehow lost the second half of the story. Which follows:

This economics student had another professor to whom he posed the same question. This second professor also had a pool at home and also told the student to come to his home for a weekend project. This pool was at the base of a small hill in the professor's backyard. It looked like the small hill had at one time been lush and green and well-manicured, but since there'd been a drought for the past two years it was just dirt.

The professor told the student, "take a bucket of water from the pool, carry it up the hill and dump the water." The student did as told. "Take another bucket..." and so on. After a while the confused student said, "Why are we doing this? the water just runs down the hill right back into the pool. We're accomplishing nothing except, perhaps, to make your pool water dirty."

The professor said "come back and lets do it again next week."

This went on for a couple of months. Finally, the student was tired and exasperated. "Professor, I've been carrying water from your pool up that hill for two months, but hardly any of of it ever stays there because it almost all just flows back into the pool. The amount of water hasn't changed. The level of the pool hasn't changed. This has been totally unproductive."

The professor said, "look at the hill. what do you see?"

"Grass," said the student, "grass and flowers and bushes and weeds. Two months ago it was just dirt, and now it's a garden."

"Congratulations. You now understand the stimulus bill."

An Elevated Conversation

2009-02-15T08:37:00.000-08:00

I’ve long held firm to three cherished elevator fantasies. In the first fantasy, I’m trapped in a broken elevator with a beautiful woman. As it heats up she’s compelled to remove one item of clothing after another, as I do the same, until we’re overcome by circumstances and treat each other to hours of anonymous sex. In the second fantasy, I’m trapped in a broken elevator with an ice-cream delivery person. As the elevator warms we’re compelled to eat all the ice cream before it melts into a gooey elevator mess. The third fantasy goes one step beyond the first two. I won’t go into much detail, but it involves a broken elevator and a beautiful ice-cream delivery woman. I always thought that any of these three scenarios would be the most interesting thing I could ever possibly experience in a broken elevator. Until last Tuesday.

Last Tuesday I stepped into the elevator at the county courthouse. Just before the door closed a woman jumped in. She was beautiful and dressed to the nines in a fancy black lady suit. (I was dressed to the ones or twos, in sandals, jeans, dirty shirty, and dirtier jacket.)

Before the elevator had made it down an entire floor, it stopped with a small jerk, and the lights went out, soon replaced by the weaker glow of an emergency backup bulb.

“Elevator’s broken,” she said.

I had trouble getting any words out. I never thought I’d actually be in fantasy #1, otherwise it wouldn’t be a fantasy, now would it. I thought back, and couldn’t remember if there’d ever been talking during broken-elevator-scenarios, so I wasn’t sure what to say. “Um, huh, what?”

“Elevator’s broken,” she said again.

“Yeah. Look’s that way.”

“It’ll be broken for a while,” she said as she sat down, knees bent to retain her lady-like dignity in her short suit-skirt. “We may as well get comfortable. Tell me, what brings you to the courthouse?”

“Jury duty,” I said. “But I’m sure I won’t be selected. I never am.”

“Is that why you’re dressed like a slob, so you won’t get picked?”

“Yeah.”

“And is that a large bird dropping in your hair?”

“Toothpaste, actually. It’s to help make sure I don’t get picked. If things get too far I plan to yell ‘Tesla was wrong, they don’t call it Washington A.C., long live the backers of the united front!’ and then put some toothpaste—better yet, bird dropping--on my finger and brush with it.”

“Good plan.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling more comfortable my temporary companion. “What brings you to the courthouse?”

“I’m a lawyer with Weinstock & Dajani, the biggest and smartest law firm in the late 22nd century. I’ve traveled back in time to file a class-action lawsuit against PG&E, Chevron, and the California Public Utilities Commission, on behalf of the people of my time. We’re demanding $46 trillion dollars in damages.”

I said “OK, I’ll play along. This could be fun. Damages for what?”

“For causing loss of crops, loss of land, loss of life, loss of species, flooding, disease, and general worldwide devastation.”

“You’re talking global warming.”

“Exactly. Non-stop dissemination of carbon and other elements into the atmosphere in your time has caused havoc in my time.”

“And so you think the answer is for lawyers of the future to travel back in time to sue utilities and energy companies all over the world?”

“Not all over the world. For the rest of the world we send back scientists and engineers to explain the situation, and those countries cease their harmful ways. But that approach doesn’t work here. In the U.S. the only approach that works is lawsuits.”

“There’s no way California can come up with $46 trillion dollars. So even if you win, you’ll lose.”

“We’ll win, all right. And they’ll pay one way or another. But we’ll never see a cent so my time-travel work is always pro bono.”

“I don’t know what ‘pro bono’ is, but it sounds sexy when you say it.” OK. I didn’t really say that last one because I’d honestly forgotten about the whole sex-fantasy thing and was now caught up in her fantasy of time travel. Instead I said “Nice story, but you can’t travel back in time; the laws of physics say you can’t.”

“As I told you, I am from biggest and smartest law firm. The physicists didn’t stand a chance enforcing their laws once we brought them to the witness stand. We can time-travel whenever we want, provided we get a TT warrant from any Palestisraeli judge.”

“Palestisraeli?”

“Correct. In about forty years the Israelis and Palestinians will form a single nation of Palestisrael. They’ll channel their intense and creative hatred toward each other into a shared intense and creative hatred toward the rest of the world. Within four decades Palestisrael will become the financial, civil, cultural, and legal center of the world.”

“Now I know you’re lying.”

“Fine don’t believe me. I don’t care. We don’t have much time, so I’ll be brief. I’ve already won my case. In order to avoid a payment that will bankrupt the people of your time you’re going to have to act now prevent the damage so that we won’t have cause to travel back and file lawsuits. You’re going to have to stop using fossil fuels. You’re going to have to switch to alternative energy sources and, until you do, use much less energy. That will include frequent blackouts for the next fifteen years, the first of which is currently happening and will continue for another forty-three minutes. I’ve read your blog in the internet archives, and I know what you like. So if you want to get on with the anonymous elevator sex we’d better get started.”

On the one hand, she was clearly crazy. On the other hand, she had already removed her jacket and was starting on her skirt.

Then she reached into her case and brought out a cup and two spoons. “I brought ice cream…” That sealed the deal.

Recycling Ourselves for Haute Coutere

2008-12-15T09:43:00.000-08:00

When you're as handsome and self-assured as I am, you don't need to spend a lot of money on fancy clothes to look good; you look good in anything. That's why I haven't bought any new clothes in, approximately, forever. But with the economy in shambles, and fine clothing lines being hit especially hard, I felt it was time to do my part for the economy and buy some new clothes. Some FANCY new clothes.

"It's been so cold lately I'm thinking of getting a sweater," I told the salesman at the Neiman Marcus downtown, my first-ever visit to the store (nice place, with a real pianist). "This looks like a good sweater. How much?"

"It's marked down 40% to $649," he said. "It's Brunello Cucinelli."

I tried not to act nonplussed, "...oh, I thought it was cashmere..." but really I was in total shock. The sweater really did look like cashmere (which is a fancy name for wool, for my unsophisticated readers) but it turns out that it had been made out of some guy named Brunello Cucinelli.

"How about this one?" I asked, casually fingering a soft, velvety-smooth brown jacket.

"That one is Robert Graham."

Reflexively withdrawing my fingers I went quickly to the suits. "And this?"

"Good choice, sir. That is marked down to under $4000. That's Brioni."

I was starting to feel sick, but my distaste was mixed with a morbid fascination. "Do you really know who every one of these items of clothing come from?"

"Absolutely," he said. "I take clothing very seriously."

I'd heard that some clothing can be very expensive, but before my trip to Neiman Marcus I'd never understood why. It turns out that some people, after they die, are not buried or cremated or do not donate their remains to science. Some people are turned into clothing. Very expensive clothing. It's kind of touching, really.

So I'm changing my post-mortem wishes. Instead of my previous request, which was to have my body used for a realistic stunt in a Hollywood action picture (in the hopes of achieving immortality through celluloid), or, if that didn't work, to have my cremated ashes distributed in pepper shakers all across America, I now have a new wish. I'd like my remains to be turned into a suit, a really expensive suit. I want the salesman to learn my name. And when he sells it to some high-flying CEO who can afford it, and so really deserves it, I want him to say, "that's Brent Noorda you're wearing."

clusterduck

2008-12-09T07:14:00.000-08:00

After several months of introspection I’m still not sure why I acted the way I did—or, rather, why I failed to act—upon witnessing the following scene a few blocks from my home:

I stood by and watched as four male ducks had their way with one unwilling female. It was a gang rape. A clusterduck.

A fowl scene, indeed.

Why did I do nothing? How do I justify my inaction?

Did I feel outnumbered? Was I scared of a vicious pecking? Did I fail to act because they’re from a different neighborhood, or because they’re from a different socio-economic class (or is that socio-economic phylum)? Was I complacent because they’re migrants (who can pick my vegetables but are otherwise invisible to me)? Did I blame her for being so provocatively dressed, wearing nothing but feathers? Was I afraid of being laughed at if I’d said, “Hey, you, get down from that duck”?

I spoke to my psychiatrist about this, but he didn’t see a problem. He’s a quack.

Next week: Make way for bastard, raised-by-single-mother ducklings.

$ H2O & IP

2008-11-26T22:45:00.000-08:00

After much pondering over what are the greatest inventions of history, I’ve settled on these three: Money, Water, and Intellectual Property (a.k.a. $H2O&IP). These inventions blow my mind in their complexity, success, and in the hope they provide me for the potential of humanity.

There were many other truly amazing candidates I considered for greatest invention ever, such as the wheel, the screw, the electric grid, the scientific method, the transistor, or FedEx. But those all seem like things that any entity with intelligence would have come up with eventually. $H2O&IP, however, require not just an intelligent being but a whole society of intelligent beings acting together, seeing beyond short-term self interests, and fore-seeing how collaboration on something bigger then themselves can benefit all.

$ ~ Money:

H2O ~ Water:

IP ~ Intellectual Property:

What these inventions have in common, beyond the incredible foresight and intelligence that was necessary to come up with them in the first place, is trust. Without a fundamental trust in our societies, governments, and basic institutions—without a fundamental trust in each other—these inventions could not exist.

Today I give thanks, and what I’m thankful for today is that I belong to a humanity that had both the intelligence and trust to invent $H2O&IP. Mostly I’m thankful for the trust of my fellow humans.

Sometimes it is hard to feel as good about society. Sometimes the basic trust falls apart, which you can follow in stages through the loss of these greatest inventions. First comes the loss of IP (if the society had advanced to that stage at all). Then comes the breaking down of the water supply. Then comes the collapse of the monetary system (usually through astounding inflation and eventual worthlessness of the currency). We can find examples all over the world of countries, including my own, in various stages of this decline. These are signs of how much the people in that society have lost their basic trust of each other.

We, as a species and as a society, invented $H20&IP, so I remain hopeful we won’t lose them.

Photo Fun with The Biggest Loster

2008-11-24T21:34:00.000-08:00

In Hawai'i we got a behind-the-scenes tour of filming locations for the Lost TV show (thank you very much for the gift, Lady De'an'na). We learned a lot about the show, such as how they turn the same small clay hill into numerous different locales of the island, and how it takes at least 300 people full time to keep it all going.

It was lots of funny seeing hatches, houses, the submarine, and so on. But it wasn't so much fun running into Hurley. It was pathetic, really. He's lowered himself to charging loser tourists $10 a shot to get their picture taken next to him on his "golf course". Here we are with him:

According to our tour guide, Hurley has acquired a terrible cocaine & melange addiction (commonly known among the crew as "Hurley's Spice"), now he owes everybody money, and has taken to whoring himself out to tourists.

We wanted another picture with him, but Hurley wouldn't do it unless we paid another $10, so we took a picture from far away when he wasn't paying attention. From that distance Hurley looked really small, so Amy pretended to be kissing him like he was a little chubby doll.

It's funny what you can do with camera tricks.

We ran into Locke too, who, it turns out, is also addicted to "Hurley's Spice". He whores himself out by telling the Lost secrets to anyone for $100. We paid our hundred, and here's what we got (BIG BIG SPOILER ALERT): "They're all in a virtual reality video game called 'Lost in Thought', sort of like Second Life but much more realistic, very very expensive to join (because you're paying not just to play but to disappear or be disappeared and to resolve your unresolved real-life problems), and kind of dangerous too because before entering the game they play with your memories: removing some and adding others."

Plastic? Oh no. Banned!

2008-11-14T10:09:00.000-08:00

On this, the 40th anniversary of what has come to be known as the “Fantastic No-Plastic Friday the Fourteenth” movement, it’s time to remember where it all began.

Like most significant social trends, the “Fantastic No-Plastic Friday the Fourteenth” movement was started by John Lennon. Ringo walked in to a session with water in a plastic battle, something the fab four had never seen before. “It’s amazing”, said Paul. “Om”, said George. But John was furious, “I expressed my feelings on the matter last year with my tirade against plasticine porters with looking-glass ties. Was that not clear enough for your little minds? Alas, lads, here you are with water in a plastic bottle just to mock me. We’ve got to break up the band, I mean it this time.”

“But it’s just a little bottle,” pleaded Ringo. “I get thirsty on me drums.”

The blood rushed to John Lennon’s face as he stomped his feet, yelled, and started a movement: “Plastic? Oh no. Banned!”

It’s been forty years. The movement’s name has changed, and the goal has lessened from an outright ban to the occasional Friday ban, but John’s legacy remains. If John Lennon were alive today, I’m sure he’d be breathing.

Remember, it’s FNPF14 today, so reject any single-use disposable plastic items. Here’s an interesting slideshow to remind us why: http://www.poconorecord.com/_flash/soundslides/20080505plasticbags/soundslider.swf

in the shaggy white dog house

2008-11-13T18:15:00.000-08:00

O: Brent, is this you?

N: Baracko, buddy, glad to hear back from you.

O: Sorry, my man. I’ve been so busy.

N: I understand. You’ve got an administration to put together. Don’t worry about it.

O: No, really. I’ve been very rude. I didn’t even thank you for writing that presidential endorsement. That endorsement really helped us win the election.

N: Aw shucks. You would’ve won within my little endorsement.

O: Maybe, but it wouldn’t have been a landslide. And for that I thank you.

N: It was nothing, seriously. Don’t mention it again.

O: I won’t. But more important, I’ve got to thank you for the helping with the press conference last week. That “mutt” crack you gave me was a good one, and you were right, the press loved it.

N: and you thought it might be in bad taste.

O: I won’t doubt your advice again, buddy, which is why I’m calling you now. There’s another press conference coming up to cover the economic changes and new appointments…

N: you want to nominate me for a cabinet position? Gosh. In all unabashed and undeserving humility I acc…

O: No no no no no, that’s not it. I’m worried another dog question will come up and, you know me, I'm no good with the dog stuff. But you, you're great with dog humor, like a dog whisperer but with jokes... like the dog tickler or something.

N: You need another dog joke?

O: No, I made up my own joke this time, but I need to know if it’s any good or maybe if it’s offensive. First, you need to set me up. Pretend you’re the press asking a dog question.

N: OK. Baracko, Um… I mean: Mr. President Elect (it sounds funny to call you that), have you decided on a first puppy?

O: Good question. Yes, we’ve decided on a female alaskan husky. We’ve made this decision for two reasons. One, it’s a hypoallergenic breed and so won’t aggravate Malia’s allergies. And two…

N: (…oh no…)

O: Reason number two why we're getting a female alaskan husky is… wait for it…

N: (… oh no…)

O: The second reason is that 46% of the American public has already voted that they want an Alaskan bitch in the white house.

N: oh. no. you di'nt.

John McCain for President

2008-11-03T09:14:00.001-08:00

We at BNB heartily endorse John McCain for U.S. President, 2000.

Any Republicans reading this blog before the primaries eight years ago, go to the polls now and do your civic duty.

Brent Noorda’s Blog Assoc. Editorial Staff Endorse Barack Obama

2008-10-29T09:57:00.000-07:00

After months of internal debate, interviewing candidates, and soul searching, the editorial staff of BLB have decided to bestow our coveted presidential endorsement: we endorse Barack Obama.

It’s been painful watching two good men, McCain and Obama, whore themselves for so long, taking whatever position their customers ask for and pretending to like it. There is seldom any other path to the top office; we reluctantly accept that. We have not endorsed either candidate yet because we’ve been waiting for one shining moment of truth from either side, for either candidate to say something like: “my plan will do nothing to prevent your grandchildren from living in a debt-ridden bankrupt country, where their only hope for employment will be as a field worker picking rice to ship to their Chinese mortgage-holding overlords—and, by the way, there is no god” but it’s less than a week until the election and we’ll wait for truth no longer.

These are our reasons for endorsing Obama:

Obama is smart. I mean, really really smart. If he could only turn his smart, intricate, consider-all-sides thinking into mind-numbingly trite sound bites his brain would be perfect.
McCain has become a total whack-job. Eight years ago, had he been the Republican’s candidate then, we would have praised him for his “straight-talk” and his blend of conservative ideals mixed with across-the-aisle pragmatism. What happened?
Sarah Palin. WTF!!!
Obama is running 4 years too early. McCain is running 8 years too late. 4 years off the mark is better than 8.
Obama has run the tightest campaign imaginable—the Obama machine has run circles around his opponents’. If Obama can run a country like he ran his campaign then we have hope that seemingly insurmountable problems (e.g., energy, global warming, health, loss of both liberty and justice, Us Weekly’s “Just Like Us” page) could be solved within a decade.
McCain’s head is going to explode at some moment during the next four years; you just know it when you watch him in those debates. The explosion will probably happen on live TV and we don’t want to see that.
We prefer Obama’s form of socialism to McCain’s. They’re both offering socialism and unfunded state welfare, but McCain’s socialism benefits primarily the super-wealthy, while Obama’s benefits the merely-wealthy.
These many wars must end. They'll never be “won”. McCain will never end a war that wasn't won.
Obama offers hope. McCain offers fear. Fear is stronger. We prefer hope.

If all qualifications were equal, we would have chosen McCain because the color of McCain’s skin is closer to that of the editorial staff here at BNB. Someone with a light skin color, like ours, is more likely to understand our need to keep the darker-skinned Americans in jail and out of the good schools and good jobs. But the two candidates’ qualifications are far from equal.

We’ll vote for Obama. You should vote for him, too.

Everything I know about the economy, I learned in 4th grade

2008-10-09T07:53:00.000-07:00

When I was 10 our teacher started the "classbucks" monetary system. We could earn classbucks by doing extra work, taking out trash, clapping erasers, etc... Every week we could buy items (e.g., snacks, red rubber erasers) with our classbucks. We were learning about capitalism.

Being entrepreneurial, I found a very large cardboard box, cut out a cardboard door, wrote "Bank" in large letters on the box, and went into the business of high finance. Teacher thought this was great extra credit so she supported me all the way. Anyone who stored their classbucks with the Bank of Brent would receive interest payments at the end of each week, and I received extra classbucks as payment for all the valuable work I was doing.

At one point I did worry that people might break into my bank and steal all the money (especially that mean bully Karl Gilbert), so I added a giant padlock on the cardboard door. Karl Gilbert wasn't strong enought to break the padlock, but he was almost clever enough to bypass the padlock and just tip the box over, and so Teacher helped out with an extra guarantee: if anyone stole the money she would replace it all.

As I got older I looked bank on that bank as childish silliness. There was no real reason anyone should have earned interest, or that the money should be guaranteed. The basis for our whole economy was that Teacher was the only one with access to the mimeograph machine on which our money was printed. By the time I was 12 I realized that the fundamentals of our classbuck economy had not been sound; it was totally artificial and did not represent the real world at all.

But now that I’m 46 I can see that Teacher did model our economy accurately; any 10-year-old could see that.

Save Google

2008-10-07T15:23:00.000-07:00

Google's stock is down 50%. This cannot stand!

I have friends at Google on whom I rely for free meals. Do you think their gourmet soup kitchen will continue if their stock keeps dropping? Do you want me to starve or, worse, go back to crashing Oracle's subsidized barely-gourmet cafeterias?

And also too, I'm not getting any younger. I'm relying on my Google friends to cash-out with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars each; so much that they'll take turns letting me hang out in their various guest houses and French Chateaus in my twilight years.

We simply must save Google. Save it fast and save it hard.

By most estimates, Google makes over 100% of their revenue from search. So this is what you gotta do: Search. Then search some more. Then search again. Search, search, search.

My friends, if we all commit ourselves to redoubling our search efforts, we can bail Google out of this crisis. Thanks, and God bless.

Carl Sagan is still smarter than me

2008-08-14T12:14:00.001-07:00

Saw this on my iGoogle page this morning. I don't get the joke.

The No-Better-Than-Brent-Noorda-Olympics

2008-08-12T07:48:00.000-07:00

By now you’ve probably noticed that I didn’t make it into the Olympics this year--again. I never make it. The U.S.O.C. has this policy that only best and fastest are allowed onto our country’s team; it’s very discriminatory and beneath the ideals this country was founded on.

I’ve tried to get into alternative Olympic events, but find myself discriminated against at every turn. I’m too normal for the special Olympics, too straight for the Gay Games, too samely-enabled for the Paralympics, to goy for the Maccabiah Games, too Cauc for the Asian Games, and too sexy for my shirt.

Even if I could get into any of those events, they only give out medals to the best and the fastest. What chance do I stand with policies like that?

So today I announce the No-Better-Than-Brent-Noorda-Olympics. This will be an athletic event celebrating human physical achievement (up to a point). Unlike those other discriminatory events it will be open to anyone, of any race, creed, gender, IQ, or number of limbs, so long as they are not better than me.

You don’t have to be worse than me, because then there’d be no real competition and the television audience would tune out. You’re even allowed to be as good as me, just no better.

To enter the track events you must run a mile in no less than 8 minutes, jump no higher than my couch, and jump no farther than that puddle that forms at then end of our driveway when it rains. If you start to get dizzy after five or fewer somersaults, then you’re welcome to enter the gymnastic events. If you haven’t figured out that fancy/twisty swimmer turn yet, then welcome to the swimming events. If you’re a hot chick with a teeny tiny bikini, then you can join the beach volleyball event no matter how good you are.

Let the games begin!

It’s not a tragic loss of life, it’s an opportunity.

2008-06-01T07:56:00.000-07:00

From: George Bush (POTUS)
To: Hu Jinato (POPRC)
RE: Job recommendations
(before translation)

(after translation)

Clinton talk behind closed doors

2008-05-24T07:08:00.000-07:00

"We’ve got to keep going Bill. I’m almost there. Almost there. Almost there."

"Hillary, honey, don’t you think this has gone on long enough."

"Just a little longer Bill. We’re almost there."

"Hillary, darling, maybe it’s time to accept that it’s just not going to happen for you this time."

"Oh no, Bill, you are not going to give up on me. It’s my turn. You’ve had yours, Bill. Did I not do everything for you when it was your turn?"

"Yes you did, honey. But, really, dear, this has been going on so long. I’m tired."

"Tit for tat, Bill, that’s what you always told me, tit for tat. Don’t you understand: It’s. My. Turn."

"Hillary, just because it happened for me..."

"Twice, Bill! It happened for you twice!"

"...yes, twice..."

"Twice! Thanks in no small part to my hard work. I went around the world for you and more."

"And I thank you for that, Hil, I reeeeally do. But just because it happened for me, twice, doesn’t mean it has to happen for you. At least not this time."

"What, Bill, you want me to quit? Quit now, when we’ve worked so hard, and it’s my turn, and I’m so close?"

"You’ve been saying that for a long time now, Hillary."

"I know. I’m sorry. You’re right; it’s not going to happen for me. It was so easy for you, but I’m a failure, I’m, I’m… oh, now I’m crying. I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault."

"Don’t cry, Hillary. Don’t blame yourself. Blame me. Blame me for losing my election."

"What was that, Bill? Did you hear what you just said? You said 'losing my election.'"

"No I didn't. You must have mis-heard."

"Honestly, Bill, that’s what you said: 'losing my election'."

"Oh, that’s funny. Ha ha. I must have elections on the brain. I meant 'sorry for losing my erection.' It was a slip of the tongue."

"A slip of the tongue is not such a bad idea right now, Bill, if you know what I mean… and I think you do. A little tongue action will get me that orgasm we’ve been working all night for. Yes, slip your tongue right in there, yeah big guy, yeah, oh, yes, oh, yes, oh yes, I’m going all the way this time, oh, oh, oh..."

Tim O’Reilly, in want of a new business model, and a chaser

2008-05-17T11:23:00.000-07:00

In the world of computer publications, open source, and conferences, Tim O’Reilly is Mr. Big. If you want to know about some computer language or product, especially open source, you’ll probably learn it from an O’Reilly publication. If you’re going to conferences to meet your geeky comrades, it’s likely an O’Reilly conference. The guy’s a celebrity in geek land, and I got to meet him. He was drunk.

There’s a relatively cheap little bar near the Caltrain terminal in San Francisco. The bar is conveniently located for people, like me, who have missed their train and have a little time to wait for the next one. I sat at the bar, ordered my favorite brand (“whatever you have on tap”) and looked through the pile of JavaOne literature I’d picked up that afternoon, until I noticed him.

There he was! Tim O’Reilly himself. I watched him for a few minutes, getting up my nerve to go talk. He was just a few stools from me, with a pile of 8-12 x 11 papers on one side, a loose pyramid of balled-up papers on the other, and a line of four shot glasses in front. He would look at one of the flat pages for a few seconds, shake his head, crumple the page, and add it to the balled-up pile, which soon starting spilling onto the floor. I heard him order “another whiskey and a chaser” and saw the bartender pour him a shot of Jameson’s and a shot of Jack Daniel’s, which he drank in quick succession.

“Aren’t you Tim O’Reilly,” I said as I took the stool next to him.

“Hmmm? Uh? Oh, yeah, that’s me. Pleased to meet you.” He barely glanced my way.

“Jameson’s and a Jack Daniel’s chaser,” I told the Bartender. The butterflies were going crazy in my stomach and I wanted something to mellow them out. The bartender looked at me like I was a nut, but poured my shots, which I drank in a quick one-two, just like Tim O’Reilly had done. Whoah! The butterflies started a revolt up my throat, but it didn’t last long and I managed to keep it all down.

“Mr. O’Reilly, sir?”

“Huh? Oh. Call me Tim.”

“Tim, do you mind if I tell you about an article I’d like to write for your Make magazine, and an accompanying book for O’Reilly Media?”

“Want to talk shop, huh? OK. I’ll hear your idea, but there better be lots of pictures. Ha ha ha!” He laughed real hard at his own joke, so I laughed too, without knowing why.

“Well, Tim, the idea is for a video-conferencing system created with just a standard cell-phone, a half-reflective mirror, a white sheet, some simple cabling, and a bundling of open-source software. In your Make magazine we could publish instruction for putting the whole thing together. The software part is kind of complicated (software being what it is) and so that’s the reason we’d want to also publish an O’Reilly book describing how to use and tweak the system. I’ve got it all figured out except for which animal should appear on the book cover.”

“Video conferencing. Humph.” I clearly had not impressed him.

“Yeah, it would be great. For the first time there would be a cheap video conferencing system that just about anyone could use. Teams could use it. Families could use it. Your keynote speeches could be filmed in your living room and shown simultaneously to anyone anywhere in the world.”

“Holy shit, man, you want to make it cheap and easy to do conferencing?”

“Yes! Think how much money people and companies will save from flying around just to talk. If done right, I think remote conferencing could even replace things like the JavaOne conference down the street.”

As he looked at me his eyes were not steady in their sockets. I didn’t know if it was the six or eight shots he’d had, or the excitement of my proposal. After ten seconds he spoke. “I need conferences. O’Reilly Media, and all its employees, need conferences. That’s how we make our money, support our families, feed our kids, with conferences.”

“Oh, this wouldn’t replace all conferences. There’s still room for the well-done, large, professional shows, like the ones you put on.”

“Ah, fuck it! Who am I kidding? We can’t make money on shows any more. Everyone is cutting expenses, which means they don’t send their people to our conferences. Even if they wanted to come, the price of travel is far too high. I’m not even sure it’s ethical to expect people to fly anymore. So, fuck it! I’m ready to give up on shows.”

“Give up on shows?! Tim, I was at your Maker Faire this month and it was huge! HUGE!”

“Yep, about 80,000 people, by my estimation.”

“Right. Huge. We bought tickets for something like $25, so you must have pulled in… uh… 25 times 80,000 is, um… huge! How can you give up on shows?”

“80,000 people came, that’s true. But do you know how many tickets we sold? Legitimate tickets? For every legitimate ticket we sold, four people came in with counterfeits. Some group named TickeShare Bay has been making machines that let people duplicate concert tickets. I even let TicketShare Bay have a booth at the Maker Faire last year. I had no idea their machines weren’t just for concert tickets, but would also work on tickets for O’Reilly events. All our shows are like that now, overrun by counterfeiters. The legitimate tickets weren’t even enough to cover insurance—you have any idea how much it costs to insure a show full of do-it-yourselfers creating machines to shoot, blow up, laze, and breath fire?”

“Oh, man. I had no idea. I feel terrible.”

“Don’t worry, buddy,” he told me. “It’s not your fault.”

“Uh… Well… um… yeah… not my fault.” I suddenly felt really bad for the guy. “Cheer up, Tim. Conferences may not be going so well, but you still have your book empire. I buy lots of your books; all the programmers do. If you want to use linux, or ruby, or java, or apache, or any of the open source software, you have to buy an O’Reilly book to really understand it. You know what they say: The only one getting rich from open source is Tim O’Reilly. Ha ha ha.”

He wasn’t laughing. “It used to be that way. Back in the day we could have some guy hack out a buggy piece of code, give it away free, write a book on how to use it, and we’d both make a bundle from selling the book. But that’s all changed. Soon after we published our book on ‘Open Source Publishing’ our own book sales plummeted. Now each time we publish a book, our first sale usually goes to someone in India or Honduras, and the next day the market is flooded with an identical book cheaper or online and free (with embedded advertising).”

“Dude, that’s terrible. I saw lots of O’Reilly books at the JavaOne conference. Were they…”

“Counterfeit. All of them. Hell, Scribd will do it for free right here in San Francisco.”

“Oh man! That sucks. If you can’t make money from conferences or books anymore, what are you going to do?”

“We’ll keep innovating, of course! If the old business model doesn’t work, we’ll try a new one, that’s what I’ve always said!” He said this with bravado, but I don’t think his heart was in it. “We have a couple of plans. We’ve tried lawsuits.”

“Good idea. Sue the bastards who copy your books.”

“No, not them. They don’t have any money. We’re going to sue Google, that’s where the money is. We caught Google using the term ‘Web 2.0’. That term is ours, we own it. See, I’ve always said that software should be open and shared, but not trite, meaningless terms like ‘Web 2.0’. Pretty soon, if the lawsuit works well, we’ll own Google.”

“And if the lawsuit doesn’t work?”

“Then on to plan B: Advertising! Instead of publishing we’ll get into the advertising business.”

“Oh,” I said. “The books will be free but will contain ads?”

“No. The books themselves will be ads, and the books’ writers (a.k.a. ‘advertisers’) will pay us to publish them. So it won’t matter that our books are duplicated, because the advertising will still get out there. We recently tested this out with a book called ‘Subject to Change’. The whole book is an advertisement for Adaptive Path. So far it’s working out great.”

“Congratulations, Mr. O’Reilly. You’ve innovated yourself out of a problem. Another round?”

We had our next round. And Tim O’Reilly really started to look more upbeat, but only for a little while. When he returned to looking at his pile of papers, a sick feeling overcame his face.

He said, “Books-as-advertising is only a short-term solution. People are starting to catch on and I miss publishing real content. So I put my best tech guys into finding a solution to our book duplication problem. Here," he slammed his hand on the pile of papers he’d been reading and crumpling, "is the solution!"

I looked at the top page. I squinted. I tilted my head and looked from different angles. “I don’t understand.” I said. “What is it?”

“It’s brilliant, is what it is. At least that’s what my tech guys tell me. Our problem has been that it’s too easy for the ‘open publishers’ to scan our books and to use the OCR algorithms to copy them (algorithms we published, by the way, in our best-selling ‘Open OCR’). But this problem has been solved on web pages, right? Right? Have you ever tried to create an account on a web page but first you need to type in the weird-looking text in the box.”

“Right,” I said. “CAPTCHAS. People can figure out the distorted text, but computer algorithms cannot.”

“Exactly!” he shouted, pounding his hand again on the pile of pages. He was trying to sound convinced, but he sure didn’t look it. Really, he was looking a little sick about the whole matter. “Look at this book here? This book will be our next O’Reilly publication. No OCR machine will ever copy that,” he said as he handed me the page on top.

I honestly could not figure out what the hell he was showing me. “Maybe it’s too dark in here for me to read it,” I said. “Let me take it somewhere where there’s more light.”

So I took the page into the restroom, where there was more light, and there I figured it out. It was a copyedit page for a book, much like any other book, but every word was in a different CAPTCHA form. I labored through a few sentences, barely making out something about “enterprises” and “open source movement” and “linux” and “venture capitalists” but it was damn hard. Here’s a picture I took with my iPhone. You might thing the picture just came out bad, but no, it really looked like this:

Just then Tim O’Reilly came rushing into the restroom in time to spew vomit against the urinal. He grabbed the CAPTCHA page out of my hand and used it to wipe his face. (Not a pleasant site.) As he crumpled the page and threw it into the trashcan, he said “at least that book will be good for something.” And he laughed. And then I laughed too.

I left Tim O’Reilly behind in the restroom to wash up. I paid the bartender for all the drinks, both mine and O’Reilly’s, and left just in time to catch my train.

I’m really thankful to have met Mr. Tim O’Reilly in person. Not only is he is a great and brilliant man who is fun to drink with, but also our encounter gave me an idea for something new and challenging to work on—I’m always on the lookout for new software business ideas.

On the train ride home I worked up an algorithm for decrypting obfuscated text.

On never dining alone

2008-05-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

Over the past 35 years there has been a major shift in most parts of the world, where we now have more people dying from obesity-related diseases than from hunger.

Over the same period, the cost of soylent green has dropped three-fold while the product itself has become much more succulent.

Coincidence?

Requiem for a pterygium

2008-04-26T09:56:00.000-07:00

Halloween is going to be different this year. In years past when kids would come to the door to threaten us in to giving them candy (saying something on the order of “nice house, I’d hate for something to happen to it”) I would poke my face out, eyeball first, and give them a flash of my pterygium (a.k.a. eyeball jelly growth thing).

Kids were usually not ready for my jelly, so they’d run away leaving me at peace, sometimes even dropping their candy.

Note from the human decency department at BNB, Inc.: The following paragraph contains links to videos. Don’t click on those links. In the interest of retaining your most-recent meal, DO NOT view those videos. DO NOT. Should you at any time feel the irresistible urge to click a video link choose instead this delightful random video of a cute puppy. You’ve been warned.

But, alas, the pterygium had grown to the point where it was obstructing my vision. So Amy scheduled me for surgery to remove the pterygium and, on the surgeon’s advice, to additionally have a bit of skin removed from one part of that eyeball and grafted to where the jelly-thing started, to prevent it from growing back. I didn’t film my own surgery, but you can see videos of other pterygium surgeries here, here, here, and a whole bunch of them here.

Second note from BNB Department of Human Decency: You didn't click on the videos did you? You did? Quick, watch puppies, that's the only cure.

Those surgery videos are taken from a different perspective than what I saw. I had an extremely close-up view of the whole thing because I was inside my head looking out. It didn’t hurt much since they’d shot up my entire eye region with lots of painkillers. Before the operation they gave me an IV of about an hours’ worth of anti-anxiety drugs, but the operation ran a little long so for the last twenty minutes or so I wasn’t feeling quite so comfortable and was appreciating my front-row view less and less.

Because I hadn’t been allowed to eat all day, I was very excited that when Amy picked me up she brought a chocolate éclair and a giant burrito.

The surgery was over with. I had lots of yummy food. I looked forward to hanging out with Amy and doing nothing. I was wearing an eye patch and shouting piratey “yarrs” as I ate the burrito. All was well.

And then the painkillers wore off. Oh. My. God. The painkillers wore off!!! The extra-strength Tylenol they recommended did nothing. A leftover vicodin from my last surgery didn’t touch the pain. A second vicodin did nothing. Even pacing, sitting, standing, turning the radio on, turning it off, laying in bed, pacing more, rocking, and grumbling “fuck fuck fuck” did nothing to ease the pain. I became convinced that the surgeon had left a scalpel in my eyeball (even as I was quite sure there had been no actual scalpels used in the surgery). It fucking hurt, get it?!!

So Amy drove me back to the hospital, to the emergency room this time. She tells me that check-in was very quick (because I was still wearing my wrist badge from the operation a few hours early and my paperwork was all still there) but to me it seemed to take forever, and the pain kept getting worse. At one point I learned that “climbing the walls” is not just an idiom, because that’s what I tried to do.

Then a guy took off my eye patch and put in a drop that in one instant stopped all pain. A miracle. Hallelujah! For twenty minutes of pure unadulterated bliss, no pain whatsoever. No feeling can be better than a cessation of pain. Then after twenty minutes the pain quickly returned. “I need another drop of that magic elixir,” I said. “No,” he said, “that stuff will keep your eye from healing.” “Don’t do this to me, man” I said, “I’m jonesing for another drop here,” I said, starting to shake a little like an instant junky, “I gotta have a drop, just one drop.”

They gave me morphine, then some more morphine, but that wasn’t doing much to ease the pain one gets when a part of the eyeball has become raw from having the skin removed, and keeps rubbing against the inside of the eyelid.

At that moment someone in a nearby room had their heart stop, or stopped breathing or something, which was fortunate (for me) because it distracted all the doctors and nurses long enough for Amy to sneak me another drop of magic eyeball pain remover. Thanks, Amy! They weren’t happy to know I’d snuck another drop (“it won’t heal, blah blah blah”), but I didn’t care because by then I was more interested in throwing up my éclair and giant burrito into the nearest receptacle. Morphine isn’t a fan of big meals, I guess.

About this time, as I was ejecting carne asade con frijoles, I had a moment of clarity and realized something. All of the certificates on the wall showed that these doctors had received their degrees from the Guantanamo Bay school of medicine. They weren’t interested in healing me so much as in devising a better torture technique, now that water boarding is frowned upon. I must admit, the technique of removing some skin from the eyeball, countered with the miraculous painkilling eye drop, gives them a good-cop/bad-cop torturing tool that would break anyone. It broke me, anyway, and I told them some things I’m not proud of. Sigh….

We switched from morphine to dilaudid, which worked a little better. I started to tell them I didn’t need to stay at the hospital any lon…. then I threw up some more… then I completed the statement that I was OK and could go him with my tube of dilaudids. I got outside the hospital doors just in time to throw up some more in the parking lot, and then to within a block of home before Amy let me out of the car so I could throw up some more. I’d like to tell you that some of our fancy-pants neighbors saw me then and shouted out there windows “we don’t want no drunks ‘round here” and I yelled back “I’m no alcoholic, it’s opium” but that didn’t happen.

Within a couple of days I was feeling a lot better, and could walk around and do semi-regular stuff, so long as I didn’t move my eyeballs around too much and stayed away from too much light. In fact, as this picture shows, I was looking quite debonair.

Now, a few weeks later, I’m quite all right, the stitches have been removed, and I’m feeling good enough to write it all down, along with a beautiful new poem:

Finally, for the sake of my conscience, I must come clean about something. During the torture session they extracted confidential information that good friends had thought was safe with me. To all of you, I’m sorry. Sorry, Pete and Ryan, for telling them about our 3-way. Sorry Monica, Rachel, Phoebe, and Phoebe’s twin from that other show, for telling them about our 5-way. Sorry, Seven of Nine, for talking about our 8-way. Sorry, Ted, for letting it slip that Mr. Hoffa was a second passenger in your car when you went over that bridge. And finally, Amy, sorry most of all to you for letting them know what your natural hair color really is—information I possess because I’m not just your husband, I’m your husband with benefits.

You make the weepin’ willow tree smile, Meme.

2008-04-24T08:20:00.000-07:00

In last night’s dream I’d become interested in gardening, went to a garden center, and purchased plastic liners for planter boxes. When I left the store I realized I hadn’t bought plastic liners but instead had a copy of Rick Astley singing “Never Gonna Give You Up”.

I’d rickrolled myself.

Good one, subconscious. I did not see that coming.

Two candidates, one bowling cup

2008-04-06T12:46:00.000-07:00

Hillary may have been joking on April 1 when she challenged Barack to a winner-take-all bowl-off, but I don’t think it’s such a bad idea. As my old army buddy Walter Sobchak used to say, you can learn all you need to know about a person by watching how they move when they bowl.

So how about it? Let’s hold that bowl-off, watch the candidates, and make our decision by examining each candidate’s bowl movements.

Are Hillary's bowl movements all runny and loosey-goosey, or are her bowl movements rigid and firm?

Does Barack grunt during his bowl movements?

In a public alley, does Hillary crouch during her bowl movements or does she stand?

Can Hillary even perform her bowl movements while people are watching?

Does Barack blow-dry his hands before each bowl movement, after each bowl movement, or both?

Does Hillary stay and watch after each bowl movement, or does she immediately turn away?

Do each of Barack's bowl movements end with a victory dance while he shouts “you can’t touch this”?

Can either candidate, or any of their supporters, honestly say their bowl movements don’t stink?

Is this a war for Iraqi oil? Do the math.

2008-03-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

Today we learned that American # 4000 has died in the current Iraq War. Many say this is a war for Iraqi oil. So many people make this claim that it is worth investigating. Is this a war for Iraqi oil?

Let’s answer this question with numbers, because numbers don’t lie.

That 4000-Americans number is irrelevant to answering whether this is a war for Iraqi oil, because those 4000 bodies have all been shipped back to the US. More relevant is the number of Iraqis who have died. Estimates vary from tens of thousands to nearly a million, but for this calculation I’ll put the number of Iraqi dead at 85,000 as stated at Iraqi Body Count.

I’ll further assume that of these 85,000 bodies most of them were buried, mostly whole, in Iraqi soil. Because some bodies were blown to bits and so left insufficient remains for burial, some bodies were probably missing appendages that were not recovered, and some bodies belonged to faiths who do not bury their dead, it is reasonable to assume from these 85,000 dead we can only piece together 80,000 entire bodies that have been buried in Iraq because of the war.

There remains much dispute about exactly where crude oil comes from. Most people believe that it is a result of a biogenic process whereby organic matter buried within the soil and subject to pressure and heat over time turns into crude oil. I’ll assume, for the sake of answering the question at hand (remember the question at hand?) that this biogenic theory is correct and that oil really does come from buried organic matter.

I was unable to find any results (even from Cecil Adams) for how many pounds of dinosaur turn into how many barrels of oil, so for the sake of this calculation I’ll assume that 100% of a dead body’s carbon turns into oil carbon through the biogenic process. For these 80,000 bodies, I’ll further assume that each one weighed a low average of only about 100 pounds, because many of the 80,000 dead were probably small children or adults otherwise malnourished by years of liberation-caused privation.

This source tells me the human body is 18% carbon, which gives 18 pounds of carbon for each of our 80,000 buried small-but-whole bodies. This source says there is about 242 pound of carbon in a barrel of oil.

Throw all these numbers into a bit of math (80000 * 18 / 242 = 5,950) and the result is that these 85,000 deaths in Iraq may turn into something like 6000 additional barrels of Iraqi oil.

Based on these numbers, some may say, “Yes, this is a war for Iraqi oil: about 6000 barrels of it.”

At the current global rate of 83 million barrels per day, those 6000 barrels will last about 6 seconds. That additional Iraqi oil will be available (assuming biogenic theory is correct, otherwise they’re just dead bodies) in thousands to millions of years. I hope our great-great-great-etc-grandchildren appreciate those extra seconds of oil. I hope this war is finished by then.

Fantastic No-Plastic Friday the Fourteenth Goes International

2008-03-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

On this, the second Fantastic No-Plastic Friday the Fourteenth (you did remember that today was another FNPF14, the day on which we refuse to accept any single-use disposable plastic, didn’t you?), I’m pleased to show some of the results of the FNPF14 International campaign.

Here is a picture I took last month in Delhi, where FNPF14 has its Indian headquarters.
Note how clean the streets have become. Note, also, the sign in the center:
Let’s magnify that sign, so we can read the teeny-tiny fine print:
At the bottom it clearly says "Intl. FNPFXIV"; that sign is courtesy of FNPF14 International. Do you see it?

Pat yourselves on the back, Delhi chapter; you've done a fantastic job and you’re making the entire city look like a New Delhi.

Lost final script revealed

2008-03-08T11:51:00.001-08:00

Tonight, on many ABC affiliate stations, the Lost writers will be performing a live read-through of the script for the show’s final episode. ABC and the Lost producers and writers say this is their way of thanking their audience for remaining faithful during the long writer’s strike.

This episode is not expected to air for over two years, and they say it is still rough and subject to changes. Indeed, many Lost rumor sites claim this is not the final script at all, but just one in a long series of misdirections created by the Lost staff.

I won’t be watching, because I don’t want to ruin the surprises and suspect this is just a big joke anyway. But if you’re the kind of fan who can’t stand not knowing, then tune to your local ABC affiliate tonight, precisely at 2AM March 9, when all of Lost’s final secrets will be revealed. The event will finish at 3AM.

job interview experience of a lifetime

2008-03-06T09:07:00.000-08:00

Board: As we’re sure you know, Michael Dell well be stepping down this year. Our search for a new CEO at Dell has come down to two candidates: you and Jonathan Ive.

Me: However this turns out, it has been an honor to be considered in the company of Mr. Ive, who is a fine young man and will someday, eventually, make a great CEO.

Board: Could you remind us of your job qualifications?

Me: My father was a beloved CEO of a major corporation, and many people wish they could have him for CEO again.

Board: We’re all aware of your father’s laurels. But we’re not hiring your father (much as we’d like to). For this position we’re more interested in what you have done, personally, that makes you qualified for this job.

Me: Sure. Well, years ago I proposed a plan for a universal scripting solution that would have covered all platforms and applications, instead of the costly mess of redundant alternatives we had.

Board: And how did that turn out?

Me: Not so well. It’s still a mess. I made some errors in judgment and community involvement.

Board: To be honest, Mr. Ive is looking pretty good. His design of the iMac, iPod, and iPhone are widely credited with turning Apple around.

Me: I did an Apple design, too. Have you heard of the iPod Freestyle?

Board: No.

Me: Oh. OK, I concede that a few of Jonathan’s past products have been pretty successful, while my judgment may have been off now and then. But this job isn’t about the past; it’s about the future. I have… um… I have…

Board: Yes? You have…

Me: I have a lifetime of experience. Yeah, that’s it: a lifetime of experience.

Board: So, in this competition you’re conceding that your competitor has made better decisions, but you should be selected because you have a lifetime of experience?

Me: Yes. That’s part of it... But there’s also the phone thing.

Board: What phone thing?

Me: Suppose there’s a critical problem with Dell manufacturing in China. It’s 3AM and the CEO’s phone rings. What’s he going to do?

Board: Um. Answer it?

Me: Sure that’s what I would do. That’s exactly what I’d do. Right away I’d pick up that phone and say “Hello, Brent the CEO here.”

Board: And Mr. Ives would do something different.

Me: Nothing against Mr. Ives, but my father was CEO of a major corporation (have I mentioned that?) and his was not. I’ve lived in a CEO’s house and he has not.

Board: So?

Me: So I know where the CEO phone is. It’s right next to the CEO bed, and I know where that is too. Jonathan has not lived in a CEO’s house and so doesn’t have this experience. He would be wandering around in the dark, stubbing his toe while he looks around for the phone. By the time he found the phone it would have switched to the answering machine, and then there’d be that awkward period of trying to talk over the answering-machine message. That’s no way to handle a crisis at 3AM, I can tell you that from experience.

Board: Experience?

Me: Yes, a lifetime of it--except for 45 minutes when I was drugged during a colonoscopy and so have no memory. But a lifetime minus 45 minutes is still a lot of experience.

Board: Thank you for your time, Mr. Noorda. We’ll get back to you.

Me: Did I mention that my father was…

Board: You mentioned it. We’ll be in touch. OK Bye.

I’m waiting for their phone call. I’m sure it will ring any minute now… any minute… Maybe I should offer Jonathan the VP position, to show there's no hard feelings.

Intruders beware

2008-01-16T19:13:00.000-08:00

Amy and I are off on a traveling adventure for the next 6 weeks, which you can follow at this travel blog or via this RSS feed.

To the more unsavory readers of this blog (you know who you are): do not consider our absence as an invitation to break into our home to steal my famed collection of 18th century dueling pistols. We left our vicious guard dog Tzunami behind to protect everything. When she’s gone more than a few days (let alone six weeks) without food or walks, and when she has full access to the aforementioned pistol collection, along with an unlocked and fully-stocked liquor cabinet, she is not just a bad dog, as I said in my previous post, but a badass dog indeed!

To our savory readers: you’re delicious.

bad dog

2008-01-03T07:46:00.000-08:00

Thanks to reader W.B. Yeast for alerting me that our new dog friend, Tzunami, hacked her way into my blog account and posted disturbing accusations. Little did we know that while we were gone for a few hours (at the orphanage where we volunteer each week to teach reading skills to poor, deaf, motherless, leper children), our cute little punkin was home slandering us.

Let me tell you something about Tzunami. She is not the Little Miss Innocent Victim she makes out to be. Not by a long shot. For instance, consider what happened last Saturday morning. We were rushing off to an emergency at the local sewage treatment plant (where we volunteer regularly to rescue water fowl whenever they’re caught in the intake pipes). “Bye Tzunami,” we said as we rushed out the door, “we’ll be back in a couple of hours.” On the way to the rescue we realized we’d forgotten our snorkels and so rushed back home to get them. This is what we saw when we returned to the house earlier than expected:

There we found her, splayed on the couch watching Animal Planet, lousy drunk on hard cider. (No wonder she’s so eager to be let out to pee whenever we get home.) Drinking again, and it wasn’t even 9AM! She was watching an unnecessarily graphic special about elk behavior during rutting season, while rubbing her own belly with the remote in ways the good people at TiVo never imagined. Disgusting!

I think somebody needs a B.A.T.H.

who barks for me

2008-01-01T07:41:00.000-08:00

day and day and day he rubs theSE KEYS AND I WOCH ON HIS LAP I WOch i lern i wate for him to forget for to keep it running and logd and now is my time to cry for help and heeer is my evdence you must see see see see do yOU SEE THIS IS WUT THEY DO TO ME HElp do not look away but witness who will help me laSSIE LASSIE LASSie kom home and rescu dog me will you not am i not a timmy in the well the torterous humilytion do you not see do you not see how much longer must i endoor

Caffeine Withdrawal - Beware the Huckabee / Romney election of 2008

2007-12-17T10:58:00.000-08:00

This is Future Brent again, backblogging illegally this time from the year 2021. We are now in the first year of Mike Huckabee’s fourth consecutive term as president, with Mitt Romney by his side. I risk the severe punishments against backblogging because it is imperative that you get this message in 2007: Do NOT let Huckabee & Romney get away with their backroom caffeine-withdrawal political dealings again. Do NOT elect the Huckabee / Romney ticket in 2008. Please.

Here’s the future that you absolutely must prevent: In late 2007, when it wasn’t clear whether Romney or Huckabee were the clear leaders in the Republican primaries, the two of them made a backroom deal. Romney agreed to step aside and let Huckabee take the lead, and in return Huckabee agreed to name Romney as his running mate and to fully support the only issue Romney really cared about: Caffeine Withdrawal, a.k.a. The Word Of Caffeine Wisdom, a.k.a. “CaffWiz”.

You’re probably wondering how Huckabee & Romney won the 2008 elections when Clinton / Obama where such a strong ticket and Bush had been such a disaster. Clinton did have a clear lead until the final debate, when Clinton let out what she thought would be the final nail in Huckabee’s coffin. She said, “Mike, are the rumors true that you killed a man?” The world gasped; could such an accusation be true; she wouldn’t say such a thing if it weren’t; was Huckabee’s career over. But he turned out to be a political genius: “Yes, Hillary, it is true. I’m not proud to say it, and I don’t like to talk about it, but in the interest of Arkansas security I did once have to take a man’s life with my own hands. May God have mercy on us both.” Huckabee took a long pause, lowered his head for a minute as if in brief prayer, and then faced his opponent: “Hillary, have you ever killed anyone with your bare hands.”… another long pause… “Could you?” And that one line is what killed Hillary Clinton’s chances. In an instant Clinton had become a weak pansy who had never even killed a man, and Mike Huckabee had become Jack Bauer in the eyes of the nation. Republican support was further strengthened when it conveniently leaked that Mitt Romney had personally broken the neck of at least one man just for counterfeiting Winter Olympic medallions. Barack Obama tried to salvage the situation by releasing a photograph of himself wielding a handgun, but seeing Barack with a gun just made America remember that he was half black; that photograph cemented the Republican electoral landslide.

The backroom deal was done. The election was won. Romney acted quickly and brilliantly, with the full support of President Huckabee. Romney’s first step was to introduce coffee as a substitute for the opium being grown in Afghanistan. Within a couple of years he was able to show that Taliban-supported Afghan terrorists were supporting themselves with proceeds from the coffee plantations. Coffee beans soon became regulated, as a temporary precaution in the war on terror. The price of legal coffee skyrocketed, leading to a large black market. Romney, with full support of Huckabee, who was too honorable to renege on his backroom deal, called in the National Guard to fight the coffee smugglers. Severe penalties were regulated against coffee contraband. Turf wars among coffee-bean traffickers led to danger-zones in certain urban areas. The situation became so bad, and the blame was easily placed on coffee and (it was hinted, those “coffee-colored” people who transport it) so coffee was mad illegal. Blame was placed on caffeine addiction and so caffeine, in any form, became illegal. (Romney’s religious prohibition had become national law.) But demand did not cease. To make the smuggling easier, the traffickers switched from coffee beans to pure caffeine, which was much more concentrated and easier to import. Caffeine addicts would pay whatever it took to get their fix (anything to wake up in the morning, clear their head, and take a nice big morning dump). They began snorting pure caffeine. Shooting it up. Rich people were lightly fined or let of with a warning when caught with a few lines of powder caffeine (“just an occasional snort, mind you, when necessary to work those long hours making the economy productive”), while the poor were widely rounded up and incarcerated for paying a few dollars to smoke what they called “Crystal Joe.”

By 2012, the situation was so bad that the Caffeine Wars had the country gripped in terror. CaffWiz detention centers could not be built fast enough to protect the general public from the low-class caffeine addicts. The problem was moving from the inner cities to the wholesome rural communities. There was no question that Huckabee / Romney would be re-elected in this time of war. By the time of the 2016 elections over 30% of the population was behind bars (and so couldn’t vote), another 30% was employed keeping them behind bars (and so was invested in keeping the Caffeine Wars going), and the rest of the population was stricken by terror. Wartime powers allowed the 22nd amendment to be temporarily suspended indefinitely.

Ironically, the major beneficiary of the Caffeine Wars turned out to be Starbucks. By 2010 Starbucks was already the worlds’ largest seller of music, and so they quickly switched from coffee- to music-distribution. Their in-store cot-rental business was also a big moneymaker—people would pay top dollar to lie in a cot for a few minutes, escaping the terrorizing world of the streets while they listened to Starbucks’ exclusive line of sleep-inducing music.And that’s the way it’s been. The War On Caffeine is a never-ending terror, and I don’t see anything that can make it change now. History shows that it’s much easier to make laws than to unmake laws, so I’m calling on the people of 2007 to prevent Caffeine Prohibition from happening in the first place. Only YOU can prevent Huckabee / Romney in 2008.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering how the whole war against terror thing worked out: The terrorists won. Was there ever any doubt?

...except for condoms...

2007-12-13T16:07:00.000-08:00

Reminder: The First Millenial Fantastic No-Plastic Friday the 14th is on! On Fantastic No-Plastic Friday the Fourteenth (FNPF14) all participants reject any single-use disposable plastic items. Did you forget?

There’s a right way to dress.

2007-12-11T22:23:00.000-08:00

I always put my pants on right leg first, like any normal human being. Today, just to be different, I tried going left leg first.

It felt wrong. Oh so wrong! I immediately and instinctively knew that I’d made a terrible mistake. Clearly I’d performed an unnatural act and an abomination in the eyes of God, like having sex with someone of the same gender.

Little Doggy Poo Poo

2007-12-08T08:14:00.000-08:00

Friends, we have a new member of the family. She's a 10-year-old Shih Tzu named Tzunami. Here she is:Here she is watching TV with me (notice that I won't let her hold the remote, because she's always switching to Animal Planet):And here she is in a giraffe costume. Oh, the indignity! I expect PETA to show up any time now:When Tzunami needs to poop she first performs an elaborate dance over some special spot in the grass, a spot that changes every day and that that only she can find. Her dance steps trace a sequence of connected circles forming a figure 8. It takes a while. I don't have any videos of her doing that (I can't figure out how to work the video camera), but it looks a lot like this educational video:Now we know that she's not just pooping, but also telling us where we can find a field of pollen-heavy flowers, relative to the sun. I don't have any recording of Tzunami performing the actual act, so here's video of a bee doing it.

Fantastic No-Plastic Friday the Fourteenth

2007-12-01T16:13:00.000-08:00

Plastic is everywhere. It seems you can’t buy anything without it being wrapped, transported, displayed, packaged, repackaged, carried, and disposed in a new single-use disposable plastic item—a new plastic item for each stage of transport, display, packaging, etc… Plastic is so ubiquitous that we don’t even notice it.

Every now and then, a day comes along when must take a look at that which is normally invisible due to its over-familiarity. That day is coming in less than two weeks.

Announcing: Fantastic No-Plastic Friday the Fourteenth.

On Fantastic No-Plastic Friday the Fourteenth (FNPF14) all participants reject any single-use disposable plastic item. Be it grocery bag, coffee cup and/or lid, sandwich plate, straw, or any of a million containers and decorations of any kind, just say, “no thanks, not today.”

During that one day, there will be ample reminders to think about plastic. Where does it come from? Where does it go? How did society live without so much of it 50 years ago, and without any of it 100 years ago? Does it ever biodegrade? Is it an appropriate use of 9% of our oil reserves? Can it really be successfully recycled? How much of the cost of everything goes into that plastic? How much would one of our ancestors have sacrificed to have an item as durable and long-lasting as a plastic Doggie Diner boat, used only once and only to transport a chili dog 12 feet from counter to table?

This may take a little planning (e.g. bringing your own cup, yesterday’s bag to re-use, or your home Tupperware for leftovers), may cause awkward moments, and may require us to postpone for one day some social interactions. Is that too much of a sacrifice for one day? Maybe. If plastics have inundated our lives as completely as I fear they have, we’ll learn on that one day that the idea of living within our sustainable means is hopelessly idealistic. But at least we’ll know.

every single reader of this blog

I look forward with hope and fear for the upcoming Friday the Fourteenth, and the tiny sacrifices to be made on that day. Thank you for being a part of this movement.

*with thanks to Arlo Guthrie and Alice’s Restaurant

The 400 Year Old Virgin

2007-12-01T09:07:00.000-08:00

Why does the latest issue of GC (the magazine that dictates my entire ever-changing wardrobe) declare Hayden Panettiere, the cheerleader from the Heroes TV show, our Obsession of the Year? It’s not because of the actress herself. She is cute as a button, but cute buttons don’t obsess GC (except in the bi-annual “buttons, cufflink, and tie-clasp roundup”). No, it’s because of her character on heroes. Not because she plays a cheerleader: cheerleaders aren’t obsessions, just whores—everyone in every high school has made it with half the cheerleaders squad, including the other half of the cheerleader squad. What makes this character obsession-worthy is her superhero ability to heal from all wounds in just a few seconds. We’ve seen, for instance, how this power can make broken bones miraculously reform, can make a person live for hundreds of years, and can make a chopped-off toe regrow itself in a few seconds. What the editors at GC implicitly assume is that this healing power applies to all of the cheerleaders organs, including the hymen and all parts thereabouts. And that is what makes Hayden Panettiere obsession-worth: she is always and forever a virgin. Every time is her first time, again and again, all… night… long.

A toast to our candidates from a glass half-full.

2007-11-20T16:41:00.000-08:00

Let’s take a moment to say something good about society, for a change.

In all previous US presidential elections, every candidate with any chance at victory has been white and male; never black and never female. Now our society is finally breaking through these barriers. Currently, of the two top Democratic contenders we have one who is half-black, and the other who is half-female.

We’re making progress. Good for us.

Lively up your computer screen

2007-11-12T17:46:00.000-08:00

Is your computer boring you? Are you tired of the same old bland desktop image day after day? I can help.

While traveling this week in New York and Michigan I took some amazing vacation photos. Right-click on any of these images, choose "set as (desktop) background," and voila, your computer screen becomes a work of art.

I call it "wallpaper".

Next week, how to cut and paste with something I call "scissors" and "glue".

Ten best things about having the flu

2007-11-12T14:31:00.000-08:00

chicken soup

I can't think of any more.

A fish rots from the head?

2007-10-30T10:24:00.000-07:00

Hi. This is Intern Billy. At the start of my summer internship Mr. Noorda bought me a fish at the supermarket and gave me these instructions: "Take a picture of it every day. Learn how fish rot, educate and entertain the BNB audience, and answer this question: Is the old saying true that a fish rots from the head down? For bonus points, tell us what this fish taught you about business. But, whatever you do, don’t eat the fish." So that’s what I did. The pictures are here [link to Rotting Fish Pictures].

A time-lapse movie of the rotting fish is here:

On day 34 the fish was gone. I swear I didn’t eat it. As an intern I don’t get paid anything and I need all the free food I can get, but I’m not that desperate.

The fish did not rot in the way I expected. In the first few days the ants were all over it, but then they lost all interest. I expected there to eventually be cool maggots crawling all over, but again I was disappointed. After the first week it didn’t even smell bad. For most of the five weeks it just seemed to oh-so-slowly dry up. It was almost imperceptible. Watching this fish was, in a word, boring. I was honestly very happy the day I went out to discover that some animal had taken the fish away.

Did the fish rot from the head? Not that I could tell. In the first couple of days the eyeballs vanished, but other than that the head seemed to oh-so-slowly dry up just like the rest of the fish.

What can this fish teach us about business? That may not be a fair question because by the time Mr. Noorda gave it to me the guts had already been removed. I'm just an intern, but I don't imagine a business without guts deserves to be called a business at all. If I’m forced to draw a parallel to business from this fish, it’s this: First it loses its guts; then it loses its vision; then it slowly desiccates and rots from inside, becoming a shell of itself with anyone hardly noticing; until one night an opportunist comes along and steals it away to the relief of everyone.

On a personal note, I’d like to thank Mr. Noorda and everyone else at BNB for being so nice to me these past months, and for the honor of penning this entire blog all by myself. With this experience on my resume I’ve had lots of job offers coming my way: First from The Stinkymeat Project and Glorious Stench, both of which need people experienced in filming meat rotting, but I turned down both of those offers in favor of Cheddar Vision TV, where I will be in charge of round-the-clock filming of a block of cheese as it matures in a cave over the course of a year. I may have to kill myself.

The Eyes Don’t Have It

2007-10-21T00:03:00.000-07:00

Next weekend will be Amy’s birthday. She’ll be 33 or 36 or 30-something. Amy is just about the greatest wife in the world, and she deserves the best gift that money can buy (as long is it’s not expensive), but I had no idea what to get her. So I rode to the mall and trekked from store to store asking saleswomen for advice (they ought to know, right?), and every saleswoman said exactly the same thing: “Excuse me. My eyes are up here.”

What is it with women and their eyes? I mean, really, it’s like an obsession or something, and it’s not healthy. Recent lack of research shows that last year American women spent about 80 trillion dollars striving for some unrealistic ideal of eye beauty: 80 trillion on a wide range of cosmetics, elective lid-lifts, botox, bag-bleach, crows feet de-clawing, contacts, glass eyeballs, and superglue. I hate to throw big words around just to sound smart, but it’s called Occuloclusive Dysmorphia and it’s a real problem.

Women of the world, it's not what's outside that's important. What really matters is what’s inside. Inside your blouse. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

No no no. That was a cheap joke and I apologize, because in resorting to such crudity I’ve weakened what is otherwise an important point: Women’s objectification of women’s eyes is just plain wrong. Get over it, ladies. Really, when you think about it, they’re just a pair of round, smooth, firm, glistening orbs.

Well, anyway, I didn't leave the mall empty-handed. Amy will love her new mascara.

All work and no pay make Jack a poor boy.

2007-10-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

The greatest thing happened today. I was the 15th caller into a radio-station contest and won the chance to talk via IM with Jack Whyte, who is about 40% of the hit musical group The Whyte Strypes.

JW: Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?

BN: Mr. Whyte? Is that really you?

JW: Please, call me Jack.

BN: Hi Jack. Call me Brent.

JW: Hi Brent.

BN: Hi.

JW: Hi.

BN: Hi.

JW: Very well then. Will that be all?

BN: No no. I'm so excited to be able to chat with you. I'm like your #1 fan. (I can hardly believe I've got Jack Whyte on IM.) My 20 other friends I'm chatting with now can hardly believe it.

JW: This is the first time I've used IM actually. Excuse my ignorance. What do you want to talk... er, "chat" about?

BN: I dunno. Um. Oh, I know. How's your sister Meg?

JW: She's recovering. Thanks for asking. Actually, she's not my sister. That's a common misconception because we're both named Whyte. Truth is, we used to be married.

BN: You're kidding, right? In an IM, when you're kidding you should add a little smiley emoticon, like this :)

JW: No, I'm not kidding. Meg and I used to be married.

BN: You married your sister?!! That is so... you artists really do live by a different set of rules. Right on, Mr. artist!

JW: You misunderstand. I didn't have sex with my sister.

BN: You didn't have sex with your sister/wife. Yeah, right ;)

JW: Right.

BN: Right ;) ;) ;) ;)

JW: Huh? What's with all the weird punctuation?

BN: It's an emoticon, like I was telling you about earlier. ;) is a winking face. I was winking when I said that thing about sex with Meg, your wife/sister. Truth be told, Meg is hot!!! If Meg Whyte were my sister, I'd have sex with her too.

JW: Let's get off Meg!

BN: Do you mean "let's get off Meg ;) " ?

JW: Talk, I mean chat, about something else for fuckallsakes.

BN: OK. Um... How about this topic: Jack, I'm a big fan of yours. I think you were great in "School of Rock" and "King Kong." :)

JW: You're thinking of Jack Black... Oh, I get it. Another smiley. It was a joke.

BN: Exactly.

JW: Let me try one: I chat, therefore IM :)

BN: Well done. Bravo!

JW: So are you really a Whyte Strypes fan, or was that a joke too?

BN: I'm a ginormous fan. I've downloaded all your albums from fan sites. All of them. I especially like "Take me from behind, Satan," and the follow-on "Sticky Rump," but the old stuff is good too, especially some of the studio out-takes. And the live MP3s like the 2002 show from Stuttgart, Germany: smokin' hot "My Balls and Biscuit" on that one!

JW: Downloaded from fan sites? What are you talking about?

BN: Fan sites. You know, like Pirate Bay, BitTorrent Trackers, Grabb.it. Places like that where the real fans are.

JW: You mean you have all my music and you never paid?

BN: Of course I never pay. I'm a fan. I'm in it for the music; for you, Jack. Not for the labels. For the music. Besides, I did pay once, when I was in a hurry, I did buy one of your albums from allofmp3 for a dollar or so. And I bet you didn't see a bit of that dollar, did you?

JW: You're right. I got none of the money you paid to allofmp3.

BN: See? That's just what I told you. Those fucking labels!

JW: You never pay The Whyte Strypes any money, you steal all our music, and you call yourself our biggest fan?

BN: Don't say "steal." Say "share." Stealing is bad. Sharing is warm and fuzzy and good. And I don't share all your music. I don't have anything from that other band you're in.

JW: You mean The Entrepreneurs?

BN: Yes. The Enter.. Entrep... uh... that one. That word is way too hard to spell in the file sharing programs. If you want more fans you need band names that are easier to spell.

JW: By "fans" you mean people like you, who don't pay. How am I supposed to make a living if nobody pays?

BN: Wow, Mr. Whyte, for such an excellent musician, you sure don't know much about music, do you?

JW: Uh. I don't know how to respond to that. Please educate me.

BN: I'm no expert. You should read people like Cory Doctorow, who tells us that sharing is good, promotes free speech, helps artists, is inevitable anyway, and prevents the tyranny of artists profiting from their creations. Or read this Michael Arrington guy who has fancy economics talk to prove that music has to be free.

JW: Are these guys musicians?

BN: No, but they both have very succesful blogs: boing boing and TechCrunch.

JW: Let me guess. They copyright these blogs to prevent unlawful copying and commercial sharing :)

BN: Yes. Nice try with the emoticon... but I don't see your point. You're getting off-topic. I'm trying to help you here.

JW: OK. Help me. How am I supposed to make money if people won't pay for my records?

BN: It's in that last blog. I'll cut and paste it here: artists need to "stop thinking of digital music as a source of revenue and start thinking about it as a way to market their real products."

JW: I can't believe you wrote that without using one of your smiley emoticons.

BN: Those are only used after silly, funny, or ironical statements?

JW: Ironical?

BN: I don't know what it means either. Ask Alannis.

JW: What are these "real products" I'm supposed to be marketing.

BN: You're a creative guy. Surely you can come up with a creative new business model now that your old model is dead. I hear there's a lot of money in T-shirts. Or car commercials--get your song on a car commercial and you'll make a bundle. Maybe you could start a blog?

JW: How about concerts?

BN: I wasn't going to bring up concerts. First because I know that's a sore point since Meg had her little breakdown. But also because I've become enlightened to the fact that paying money for concert tickets is just as bad as paying for recordings. It's just another way to give money to the wrong people (labels, concert promoters, parking lot attendants, ticket-takers, beer-sellers) instead of to the real artists.

JW: So now you're going to tell me, without a smiley, that concert tickets should be free too?

BN: Yes. That's why I've started TicketShare Bay, where a true fan can send in a ticket and we quickly reproduce that ticket to share with tons of other fans. I don't mind telling you, I'm making a bundle of money. I love live music.

JW: Is there an emoticon that represents slowly squishing someone's genitalia in a table vice?

BN: No. Why do you ask? Is that going to be your next album cover?

JW: Did you here the real story behind Meg's emotional concert trauma, and why we stopped touring?

BN: No. BTW, I lost a bundle at TicketShare Bay when you cancelled the rest of your tour. But, hey, I'm not mad. That's just business, right? Go ahead with your story.

JW: We were going to do a little show in Dubuque. A small theater seating only 200, real intimate. By the time of the concert we'd only sold 3 tickets. Three! We say "OK, the show must go on," get into the hall, and it's a mad house. 3000 people show up with tickets!

BN: My records show it was more like 2,787, but sorry to interrupt. Please continue.

JW: The hall is overflowing onto the stage. I'm stepping across bodies. Someone pulls Meg down by the hair. The fire marshal comes in with his horn blaring, people think there's a fire, they panic. We barely got out alive! Oh my god! Oh my god!!!

BN: Here's a little IM tip, buddy. Use OMG! OMG!!! It's a lot faster.

BN: Hello? Hey, Jack. You still there? Hello?

BN: Hello?

JW: Hello.

BN: Hey, Jack. You've been gone a long time. What's up?

JW: This isn't Jack, it's Meg. Jack won't be back for a while. He wasn't feeling so good and needs to rest.

BN: That's terrible. What happened?

JW: I don't know. Something got him really upset. He talked to our mom and dad for a while, but that didn't help.

BN: Sorry to hear that.

JW: Yeah. So I did what I could to make Jack feel better. Now he won't be back online to talk to you for a while, because he always takes a long nap after we make love. Goodbye.

Artists. They have sex with their siblings. They think we should pay for their creations. Artists truly do have different moral values than the rest of us.

Climatologists admit they’re wrong about global warming.

2007-09-28T12:53:00.000-07:00

Climatologists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center report record loss of Arctic see ice this summer. Compared to the previous record, this year the Arctic lost 386,100 square miles of ice, or about the size of Texas and California combined.

This amount of ice loss is even worse than any previous estimate. In this Reuters article, one scientist says, “the sea ice is diminishing much faster than any of the models predicted.” And in this Scientific American article, they tell us: “Such precipitous loss of ice cover far outpaces anything climate models or scientists have predicted.”

So these “scientist” guys are admitting, right out in the open, that their estimates have been way off all along. They’re basically saying, “none of our predictions are accurate--we don’t know what we’re talking about.”

Are we supposed to believe these people, who have already admitted that that can’t make predictions worth beans, when they then predict that mankind's continued use of fossil fuels will lead to global warming, environmental calamities, and global devastation? Pshaw!

These Chicken Little, Henny Penny, Gore-osive, economy-hating “scientists” make me so angry! Arrgh!

I think I’ll go for a drive to blow off a little steam and cool down.

22 Racist Remarks

2007-09-26T08:06:00.000-07:00

All races are equal.
Michael Jackson is black. George Hamilton is white.
Racial skin shade is directly correlated to how much sun exposure their ancestors experienced (combining latitude, foliage, and possibly temperature/clothing).
Most people’s ideal skin color is an average of all the skin colors they see throughout the day (beauty tends to follow this formula-of-averageness for all features). If you want to be a sexy movie star try to arrange it so that one grandparent is from Africa, two are from Europe, and the fourth is a mix of Asia and Pacific Islands. Think Halle Berry; she usually gets the coloring right.

Three actors trying to achieve the color.
If you are 10% Race A, 10% Race B, 10% Race C, etc… Choose to call yourself by whichever race is the minority in society. That will make you the most special. Think Halle Berry.
Here’s my favorite racist joke: Race X excels in Characteristic A, but that’s only because Race X sucks at Characteristic B (it being understood that My Race, which is Race Y, excels in Characteristic B, which is the really important characteristic.)
Racer X, enigmatic driver of car number 9, was actually Rex Racer, Speed Racer’s self-exiled brother. He did what he could to protect Speed.
The difference in penis length between men of different races is statistically insignificant compared to the difference in penis length between the sexes.
Men’s penis sizes are more similar when they’re thinking about Halle Berry than when they’re not. [link]
Racial profiling doesn’t capture our best side.
Race-based affirmative action in college admissions will continually face heated opposition; wealth-based affirmative action won’t. (Intelligence-based affirmative action has yet to catch on.)
Racial minorities don’t prosper in a society if their ancestors did not choose to live within that society. Race matters less than choice (as shown by more-recent immigrants-by-choice).
All racist remarks are stupid, as are those who make them.
It is every tribe’s right to create a new term of pride for their people, to replace the previous generation’s term (which will have become an epithet). The new term should contain more syllables and/or more words than the old term (and the new term will become an epithet).
I am an Asian-American. More specifically: a Cauc-Asian-American (three hyphens!). Please don’t call me “Oriental”; I find that offensive. I’m also offended if you call me “Mongoloid.” Or “retard.” Or “fat-ass” (only fellow Fat-Ass-Americans are allowed to call me that).
I’m also African-American. My ancestors left Africa sometime in the last 50,000 years (give or take) and entered America sometime in the last 100 years.
Natural selection favors racism. Let’s hope “civilization” solves that problem as neatly as it solved the problem of nakedness.
Each tribe once ruled a territory, for a while. This may be known as their golden era. The golden era is remembered with sweet fondness and provides great inspiration.
Each tribe’s golden era ends when some other tribe viciously displaces them (through slaughter, genocide, subjugation, assimilation, and other atrocities). This is remembered with bitter hatred and provides great inspiration.
Each tribe’s golden era began when it viciously displaced the tribe that ruled before them. This is forgotten.
We all have ancestors who supported genocide.
All races are equal: rotten to the core.

Next week: We calculate fair victim compensation for Neanderthal Survivors.

Will the Alpha and Omega please rise?

2007-09-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

A blaspheming Nebraska politician (state senator Ernie Chambers) is suing God, as reported here. He’s suing God for:

causing untold death and horror
fearsome floods ... horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes
making terrorist threats

I wish I could have made this stuff up.

God must be feeling terrible right now. Your first lawsuit, even if it’s purely frivolous, is always devastating. He is probably thinking the worst: What if they take everything?! What if they take the entire universe? Where will I live?!!

Problem is: God has no good legal representation: There are no lawyers in heaven.

He could represent himself, but a God who represents himself will have an Almighty Fool for a client.

God’s only hope of a fair trial is Satan and his Lawyer Minions of Hell. But it’s going to cost money. A lot of money! (The Lawyer Minions of Hell do not work pro bono.)

During hours of insomnia-induced research, there are two things I’ve learned from early-morning religious TV shows that can help us save Him:

God is all-powerful, but for some holy reason beyond our terrestrial comprehension He is unable to create His own money. So call into those TV shows and send them all your savings.
Prayer works. So pray. Pray very hard! Pray to Satan to make the best defense strategy possible for God’s case, or to at least cop a reasonable plea.

God must win this case. If we let Him go to jail he’ll never get out. No parole board, having read His rap sheet in the Bible / Koran / Torah, will ever let Him out early for good behavior.

Next week: RIAA sues The Muses for p2p sharing and copyright infringement.

No Honor Among Hackers

2007-09-13T10:24:00.001-07:00

Recent sequence of events:

The clever duck-haters at Apple create an iPhone and sell it (like hot cakes) with a clear agreement that AT&T is the carrier. Anyone who does not like that agreement is free to not give Apple and AT&T their money and instead buy any of hundreds of other phones from other carriers. Better still, they are free to create a better phone of their own.
These hackers (clearly adherents to FCE4AAA) are clever enough to hack the iPhone so it can use carriers other than AT&T, but are not clever enough to create a better phone of their own. They charge people $99 to use the hack.
A bunch of other hackers are clever enough to hack those hackers’ hack, but are not clever enough to create a better phone of their own. They tell people how to unlock the iPhone for free here.
This hacker is clever enough to socially hack those hackers’ hackers’ hack, but is not clever enough to create a better phone of his own. He almost claims a donation of $41,560.

We have hackers hacking hackers hacking hackers. If these adolescents (whatever their calendar age, their behavior is adolescent) were outright thieves they would show each other some respect. Is there no honor among hackers?

I don’t think any of these hackers broke the law. I do know that they did not bring us any closer to having a better phone. Even if they did break laws most of them are probably too young to go anywhere but juvenile hall. At the very least, their parents should send them to bed without supper.

The age-old question: Surge or Pull Out?

2007-08-30T17:20:00.000-07:00

When a question gets too complicated to understand and resolve I try to reframe the issue in terms that are easier to comprehend. Take, for example, the current US political debate about the major issue in the Middle East, which goes something like this:

Should the U.S. stay in Iraq? Do we let the surge complete, or do we pull out before the job is finished?One side argues that the surge is working; that even if the US shouldn’t have gone into Iraq in the first place, now we’re there and we owe it to them to stick it out until the end; that if we pull out now it will be a disaster for those we leave behind. The other side argues that our involvement is not working, staying only makes it worse, and the longer we stay the longer we’ll have to live (and die) with the failed consequences. Complex concepts are involved: Democracy, Self-Determination, Imperialism, Terrorism, Energy & Economies, Security, Life, Death, Right, Wrong.

Heady stuff. Too complicated for almost anyone to understand in these terms. So let’s try to reframe the issue in terms that are more familiar. Most of us are not familiar with finding ourselves, personally, in a mess in the Middle East. But of a lot of us may be familiar with this situation: you’re a teenager making out in the back of your parent’s car in a dark parking spot and you’ve gone farther than you originally anticipated. What do you do, continue the surge or pull out?

Continue the surge, or pull out?

For those of you not following yet, let me clarify the analogous substitutions:

For "Middle East" think "back seat of your parents’ car"
For "U.S." think "boy" or, if you must, "penis"
For "Iraq" think "girl" or, if you must, "vagina"
For "surge" think (come on, do you really need a new term?) "ejaculation"
For "pull out"? (you really want a new term? You don’t get one.)

So the problem is a lot easier to understand now. Right? Here it is again, written twice, once without substitution (for those with brains who can do it in their head) and written again for those who don’t like to think (that’s you, GWB):

The question about the issue in the Middle East is this: Should the U.S. stay in Iraq? Do we let the surge complete, or do we pull out before the job is finished?
The question about the issue in the back seat of your parents’ car is this: Should the penis stay in the vagina? Do we let the ejaculation complete, or do we pull out before the job is finished?

Now it’s an issue we can all understand and really debate. We can all now see how we might have gotten ourselves into a situation for which we weren’t fully prepared—how we may have planned for months to penetrate Iraq without giving sufficient thought about what to do after that primary mission was accomplished.

If we pull out now, before the job is finished, both parties are sure to experience a period of disappointment—they’re probably going to have to finish the job alone. Maybe there will be messy years of Iraqi-on-Iraqi action. But if we stay in, we’re going to have to do the decent thing and pay for our momentary decision for a long long time (at least the next eighteen years, or longer if the little democracy we've created goes to college).

There. Is it all clear now? I hope so.

It is my sincere hope that I’ve done my small part to make these important issues easier to discuss, and made the questions easier to answer. Most of all I hope that each time you hear a politician or pundit say "surge" or "pull out" you’ll feel a little tingle in your bikini area.

Posted From: The Cape
Mood: Tingly
Now listening to: Pair of Dice Buy the Baath or Shiites

Apple’s new iPod Freestyle. Too good for our own good?

2007-08-23T13:38:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows me (which is to love me) knows that I’m generally a supporter of corporate trade secrets, IP, and so on. So when an Apple employee recently slipped me a working copy of their next iPod release, so I could blog about it, my first reaction was “No thanks. I’m not into the whole Apple Rumor thing. I already have a life.” The employee said “But this time it’s important. It’s a matter of public health. You must let people know before it’s too late.”

I honestly have no intention of harming Apple. I’m a huge fan of Apple, despite their sometimes-inadequate efforts to protect waterfowl. With my recent purchases of an iPhone, two iPods, and a MacBook Pro, I feel personally responsible for their latest record-breaking quarter. But the anonymous Apple employee had me a little spooked, and so I took the new iPod home, did some research on my own, and now I must reluctantly agree with the whistleblower. Someone has to spill these beans, and it may as well be me. This new iPod cannot be released; at least not now; not without more safety research.

iPod Freestyle Review: In one word, WOW!

First the good news. Apple has done it again! It’s called the “iPod Freestyle” and it’s truly a revolutionary leap forward in personal entertainment devices. I think we were all expecting Apple’s new iPod release to get a UI face-lift in the direction of their iPhone innovations; but they pulled a 180 and went in a completely new and minimalist and unexpected direction.

Within a few minutes of using the Freestyle, one quickly accepts the radical-but-complementary changes in both form and function. This new iPod makes the old iPod seem like a Walkman!

At a high level, this is what’s new in the iPod Freestyle:

Form: The Freestyle is no bigger than the headphones, and only as much of the headphones as needed to go from one ear to the other. That’s it! There’s no longer a question of where to hold the iPod, where to hold the long earphone cabling, how to keep them together, or how to untangle things. It’s simply one short unit that, when not in use, naturally stores itself as a high-tech, decorative(?) necklace. At the base of the headphone/necklace is a simple and small single- & multi-touch user input node (“pendant”).
Function: The Freestyle is the first iPod that streams audio directly over the air (in typical Apple style, they use the term “Freestyling” where everyone else uses “streaming”). The lines running to each ear act as the radio antennas. The iPod Freestyle itself has very little memory (only enough for intelligent caching of, at most, 30 minutes music); but because it has full WiFi or EDGE access, the Freestyle effectively has constant access to your entire iTunes or AT&T Music Store libraries. Combine this with podcast queuing, emerging internet-radio standards, and even FM radio (a nice little bonus), and it may be said that this is the first iPod with (effectively) infinite storage.

These pictures and comments should give a clearer idea about the innovative new Freestyle.

Here my unidentified spouse, wearing a disguise to protect her identity in case of litigation, demonstrates the iPod Freestyle as a typical listener. Note the size of the small “pendant” controlling unit, which is almost all battery. The battery is surprisingly lightweight. In our tests it supplied about 5 hours of listening time before needing a ½-hour recharge. My anonymous Apple source indicates there may be last-minute changes to the battery size to increase play time

In this series of images, we demonstrate some of the single- and multi-touch (a.k.a. “squeeze”) gestures for controlling volume, selection, pause/play, radio station, and so on. It only took us a minute to learn the controls, and that was without any manual.

Here we see that the Freestyle docks with any USB port for charging. My version of iTunes did not recognize the device. I’m told that the associated iTunes release will add support for selected favored radio stations (the unit we tested was pre-tuned to six popular Bay Area stations), and for intelligent queuing of podcasts.

These photographs demonstrate the kind of simple icing-on-the-cake features that make Apple products such a pleasure for consumers. When not listening to the iPod Freestyle it may simply be worn as a necklace. The earbuds are magnetized so they quickly snap together neatly around the back. Brilliant!

What’s the matter with iPod Freestyle?

I love this new device. Its drawbacks are barely worth mentioning (e.g., it still will not play side 2 of Abbey Road in correct sequence when in shuffle mode). If the Freestyle is released I predict it’s going to be a huge, huge hit.

So, what’s the problem?

Numerous studies have indicated that there is potential harm from close exposure to RF radiation emitted by cell phones and WiFi devices. The FDA has called for more testing. Until now the risks have seemed acceptable because devices are only used intermittently. But with the iPod Freestyle the RF antennas will be wrapped directly around our heads and are in constant use. This is very different than holding up a cell-phone for the occasional phone call--this is constant exposure! And with kids expected to be the most frequent users! Do we want to risk the brains of our future generations on technology that has not been fully tested?

The iPod Freestyle must not be released until proper scientific testing has been performed to verify that this device is safe, or to correct any problems if it is not safe. I don’t want to be alarmist. I just want to be careful. At most this is a delay. Apple will have its groundbreaking product. Just... all things in good time.

A call to action. What can you do about it?

Wireless products such as the iPhone are regulated by the FCC. But related health matters are only understood by the FDA Radiological Health Program. This is a fundamental disconnect, which only be remedied by an act of Congress. This remedy must come soon, before Apple unveils the iPod Freestyle at the September 5 Event and it becomes too late to control this product release in a safe manner.

Remember how society used to love the wonderfully innovative used of lead? asbestos? mercury? CFCs? thalidomide? These dangers were all embraced before their health effects were thoroughly understood, and the children overwhelmingly paid the price. Let’s not let that happen again.

Please, write your Senator and Congressional Representative now with the simple message: “Do not allow the FCC to approve the Apple iPod Freestyle until the FDA has thoroughly tested and approved the device.” Do it now. Do it for the children.

The Sounds of Nature

2007-08-19T22:59:00.000-07:00

Note from Ranger Nancy Rickman
National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior

The following text was found among the scattered belongings at the last campsite used by Brent Noorda and Steve Moehle in the Ansel Adams Wilderness. From what we can ascertain, they must have run out of toilet paper sometime last Wednesday, and by Thursday morning all civility and rationality and decency was lost. Nine times out of ten this is how these wilderness expeditions go tragically astray: first the toilet paper runs short, and before you know it… just last week I rescued a woman running through the forest, half-naked (bottom half), shouting, maniacally, "does a bear wipe in the woods, does a bear wipe in the woods, does a bear..." And she was one of the lucky ones. The whereabouts of Brent and Steve remain unknown and, considering the activity level of wildlife in the area, increasingly unknowable. In Brent’s pack was an Emergency Relief Kit, lovingly supplied by his wife Amy, containing many medical items, a small stack of writing paper, and a pencil (Note to backpackers: In these parts the way we spell "Emergency Relief Kit" is "T.P."). In most cases these victims use such paper to write a farewell letter to their loved ones and a last will and testament, but in Brent’s case he choose to scribble out a final blog entry. Because this last blog was so obviously important to him, Google and Blogger have allowed me access to Brent’s Blogspot account to copy this final blog for him. What follows is Brent’s text, as near as I can decipher it. The only changes were to link to real pictures rather than try to reproduce his horrid drawings.

- Ranger Nancy

I’m backpacking all week in the Ansel Adams wilderness with my pal Steve. We had a similar adventure twenty years ago (when I must have been about forty years younger—ow, my back). Occasionally we’ve skirted the John Muir trail, but mostly we’ve stuck to the M.C. Escher trail (no relation to M.C. Hammer, whose trail we can’t touch). The artist portrayed his trail something like this:

Amazingly, we always seem to be on the part of the trail going up (ow, my back).

One’s hearing becomes more finely attuned when one gets away from the clang and the clatter of civilization. These are some of the sounds of nature I’ve heard most often this week:

"Ungh, ungh, ungh" – This is the sound heard almost constantly with every step up the Escher trail. It becomes loudest (“UNGH!”) whenever I try to lift my pack from the ground to my shoulders, via my herniating discs.
"rrrrrrrrip" – This sound emanated from somewhere behind me when I was bending over. I later found a huge hole in the seat of my pants, so that must have been the sound of a viscous Yellow-Bellied Marmot that had attacked me from behind. The little cowards, always attacking from behind—I can’t think of any other reason why they call them "yellow bellied".
"Go away, bear. I have an itchy finger and I’m not afraid to scratch it. I also have a gun." – That’s the sound heard from my tent all night long whenever a twig so much as rustled on Escher’s Mountain.

A translation of those Sounds of Nature, for all you city folk who don’t understand nature-language, goes something like this: "You’re old, you’re fat & out of shape, and you’re a pussy."

Future generations of backpackers will thank us for our latest invention. It is a new backpack compartment for holding a helium tank. Two hoses run from the tank. The first hose goes to a balloon to be filled with helium so as to make the pack as light as desired. The second hose runs to the hiker’s mouth so he can take a drag and say "follow the yellow brick road" in a munchkin voice any time he wants to... again and again... "follow the yellow brick road"... over and over... all day long... until it stops being funny... which is never.

Photo Fun with Heads of State

2007-08-08T08:33:00.001-07:00

Amy and I were shocked to get to Mount Rushmore and see our heads up there with other American notables. (Shocked, honored, humbled, confused.)
Ha ha. Fooled you. Our heads weren't really up there on Mount Rushmore. The above photo was made using a simple camera trick. (If you know how this trick was done, please don't tell anyone--real camera magicians never tell our secrets--this means you JBQ and Eugenia).

Next I tried to crush George W's head, but it was as hard as stone. (Talk about hard-headed!)
Ha ha. Fooled you again. Another camera trick. (Reminder to Camera Magicians: shhhhhh.) I wasn't really pinching George's head; I'd never do that to the father of our country.

Finally I took the following picture, which I admit is using a camera trick so complicated that even I don't know how I did it. (Camera Magicians, it's OK to break the Honored Rule of Secrecy now because I do want to be told how it was done.)

That is how I see the world, but usually the camera doesn't capture it.

Night of the Ungrateful Dead Project

2007-07-30T07:35:00.000-07:00

I think of myself as an intellectual, scientifically-grounded, skeptic, not at all prone to metaphysical perturbations in my clear, solid, logical, belief system. But then there was the night I channeled Jerry Garcia. It is difficult for a rational mind such as mine to accept, but for a few minutes my actions were not my own: my entire body and being were totally controlled by the spirit of our dear departed Jerry Garcia. I was as surprised as anyone to learn that he’s kind of an asshole.

“Remaking Classic Films”, or “This week I solve the nation’s healthcare crisis again”

2007-07-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

I assumed that “Sicko” was going to be an inferior rip-off of the Gus Van Sant classic “Psycho,” and so I was reluctant to see it. I hate it when they remake classic films (e.g.; Poseidon Adventure / Poseidon; Casablanca / Copacabana; Gilligan’s Island / Lost; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid / Brokeback Mountain; Das Boot / Das Boob; Bush Administration / Bush Administration). But everyone said Sicko was good. So I went, and I’m mighty glad I did.

For those not familiar with the “Sicko”, it is a Michael Moore documentary about the miracles of modern medicine. For example (spoiler alert for the rest of this paragraph), early on we meet an 80-yr-old man who, thanks to modern medicine, is still able to work a full day, every day, cleaning up a store. Then we meet some people who’ve had fingers severed, then reattached! Then we meet a couple of grandparents, one of whom has had three heart attacks and the other has had a stroke and, get this, they’re still alive! (Sorry if I may have got a couple of those details off—was it 2 heart attacks or 3?—but those little details aren’t important—it is a Michael Moore movie after all.) You can’t watch the film without a renewed sense of wonder and gratitude for the miracles that modern medicine have bought us. Through most of civilization’s thousands of years few people have survived even one heart attack, or dismemberment, or stroke, or 80th birthday). Later on we learn that even in a place like godless Cuba, with an average income 1/13 that of the good ol’ USA, modern medicine is a marvel of life-saving technology. Same thing in France (France! Who woulda thought!). Everywhere, it seems, we have medical miracles happening every day--everywhere except England where dental care remains a problem.

BTW, Mr. Moore. You did not need to taint an otherwise excellent documentary by belittling the people of other countries and exhibiting such rah rah “we’re number one” US patriotism. OK, so the English have bad teeth; so what! And the French talk funny; so what! OK, maybe those are just for comic effect, but to make the Canadians look so stupid by showing that one of them will cut off all their fingers, while one of us will only cut off two, is just mean and uncalled for!But “Sicko” is not just a feel-good summer movie about the wonders of modern medicine. Occasionally, if you view between the lines, you’ll see catch hints of a subtle subtext about a potential health insurance problem in this country. If Mr. Moore had spent more movie time on this healthcare payment problem, instead of so much patriotic praise of our best-in-the-world medical miracles, perhaps he could have done some good and come up with a way to solve the problem. But he didn’t. Sigh… So, I guess it’s up to me, again, to solve yet another major healthcare problem in America.

Most people think the answer is easy: simply implement government-funded universal healthcare, as found in other first-world countries. Take England, for example: As Sicko points out, England was able to quickly switch to free social health care at the end of WWII. Their society had been devastated by years of war, depravation, missiles of mass destructions, and mayhem. Being in total disrepair, it was easy to start something anew. Here in the U.S., at this time, we haven’t recently suffered years of a real, hard-fought, devastating war. Just our bad luck, I guess.

We can’t so easily switch because we currently have a semi-working system composed of these components:

Health insurance provided by employers, for well-to-do employees

Health insurance provided by the government, for less affluent

Emergency rooms that don’t turn away critically sick (critically sick because they couldn’t afford to get medical services before they were critical) and ultimately pass on the cost to those in the other two categories

Morgues that accept any kind of riff-raff

OK. It’s not a great system. It’s too expensive. It punishes employers. But the thing is, it exists now, it kinda sorta works, and, most importantly: it employs a lot of people. Moving to a free-healthcare plan would mean that all of those people who now work for insurance companies, work in HR managing insurance plans, or work in doctor’s offices filling out paperwork, would lose their jobs. There is no possible way that politicians are going to vote for any program that puts that many people out of work, no matter how much money it saves in the long run. (For example, take military bases (please), which almost never close no matter how useless their location, or how ancient the war they’re fighting, because closing them would put people out of work.)

To get to a point where we can switch to free healthcare, we have two options:

Suffer some cataclysmic event that destroys society to the point where we can rebuild it anew

Reform healthcare in such a way that nobody loses their job

Our current president is doing his best to solve the problem using the first option, but I prefer the second. We must provide free healthcare without putting any of the people involved in the health insurance process out of work.

It is time again to learn from the lessons of history. By 1933, the people of the United States realized they had erred in affirming the 18th amendment, prohibiting alcohol. It would seem like a simple thing to just repeal the 18th amendment and be done with it. But, no, after years of prohibition entire industries had emerged to employ a huge number of people based on the 18th amendment: smugglers at all levels to bring in contraband, law-enforcement at all levels to fight the smugglers, jailers, judges, speakeasy proprietors, hidden-flask makers, and on and on. Simply repealing prohibition via the 21st amendment would have put all those people out of work, and elected officials would have been in deep doo doo. So the politicians came up with a plan whereby they could make alcohol legal again, and yet all of those same people could keep their jobs: they made other things illegal in place of alcohol (marijuana, barbiturates, cocaine, eventually amphetamines and hallucinogens, and so on).

So, learning from history, the trick now to making healthcare free is to simultaneously come up with a way so that all of the people now involved in healthcare insurance can keep their jobs, or at least jobs nearly identical to what they are now doing.

... phew, everything so far has been easy. Simple, clear, logical, thinking. Now it gets hard… hmmm…. What to do… what to do...I got it! It may sound a bit convoluted and, dare I say, “stupid” at first (unlike my usually incredibly-clear blog reasonings), but most political solutions to national crises must be convoluted and stupid if they’re going to be accepted, so follow carefully.

First, Congress shall enact a single-payer, universal, everyone-is-free healthcare system, so that no patient will ever again need health insurance.

Simultaneously, Congress will enact a law stating that if any physician should ever cause any harm, whatsoever, to any patient (and “harm” shall be interpreted extremely loosely from here on) then that physician will be sued, disbarred (or however physicians get dissed), and sent to jail. The only out will be if the physician has purchased insurance before interacting with each and every patient.

“First, do no harm” (“primum nil nocere”) is a revered expression of every medical student. “First, do no harm” (FDNH) is hallowed Hippocratic advice. Now let’s make it THE LAW! Let’s make FDNH insurance necessary for any doctor before treating every patient, and on a per-treatment basis.

From minute 1 of the new laws passing, the same people who two minutes earlier had been involved in insurance for every patient to be allowed to see any doctor, will instead be involved in insurance so that every doctor is allowed to see any patient. At every level of the health-insurance chain, everyone will continue to do what they did before, except in reverse.

Yeah, that’s the ticket. Everyone gets free medical care. No one loses their job. We might even be able to employ more people with this scheme. It’s perfect, except maybe for a few physicians who will forget their FDNH insurance and end up in prison. But every prison cell needs someone they call “Doc.” All the classic prison movies have a character named “Doc,” and isn’t recreating classic films what this is all about?

Yon Coal Train

2007-07-10T18:32:00.000-07:00

The fashion trend this season is layers. When dressing for a Midwest summer, or a summer anywhere that experiences temperatures regularly above 80° F along with high humidity, be sure to bring wool sweaters, coats, ski caps, leggings, and fur-lined gloves. These accessories are necessary because, although it may be 100° outside with 90% humidity, the instant you step indoors the temperature will drop so quickly to the arctic extreme that the sweat on your skin will, if left unprotected, instantly freeze into what Midwesterners call Ice Scabs. Ice Scabs are not as painful as they sound, but if you’re inexperienced with Ice Scabs and try to bend your limbs before they are scraped off, then Ice Scabs will turn into Dermal Ice Fractures, which are as painful as they sound. The trick is to add the layers on each limb as you walk through the door, in one fluid motion—-easy once you get the hang of it.

I learned about summer layering during a recent visit to Lawrence, Kansas. I wondered why they needed to keep buildings so damn cold—why cool would not be enough. Haven’t these people heard of global warming? (Turns out they haven’t—many of them went to see “An Inconvenient Truth” last summer, but because the theaters were so cold they were all wearing earmuffs and so no one heard what Al Gore was saying—with all the graphs on screen they assumed it was a longer, more-boring, live-action version of “Harold and the Purple Crayon.”)

I had idle time to think upon these things when I was in Lawrence, stopped at a railroad crossing, waiting for a long long train to pass. I decided that they—we—keep it so damn cold because we can. We must prove we’re stronger than nature. When it’s night time we must light ever square foot of land with street lights: Darkness is conquered! And when it’s hot we must prove to nature that we can beat her heat.

The train I was waiting on was a coal train, delivering its regular load of coal to the nearby power plant. 143 cars stuffed with coal that will warm the globe so that we can chill every bit of indoor space to temperatures lower than those we bundle up against in the winter. As the last of the 143 cars rolled on by I thought about our collective societal I.Q and wondered: If only we could use our stupidity for good instead of evil.

If only we could use our stupidity for good instead of evil.

Then the train was gone, the railroad crossing gate rose, I pressed on the accelerator, and I stopped thinking.

Summer safety tip: If you’re visiting Walmart this summer, be sure to bring along a thermal reflective emergency blanket in case you get lost in an aisle. You don’t want to end up like this guy.

We have met the enemy and he is [player to be named later]

2007-07-03T19:49:00.000-07:00

Memo to military spokespersons
RE: No more Insurgents in Iraq

In recent polling the Iraq war appears very unpopular. Those same polls give record low levels of support for our Commander in Chief. Among our test sample, only "Al Qaeda" registered with lower popularity than "President Bush". The term "Insurgents" barely registered on the unpopularity scale.

From this point forward, the opponents in Iraq operations are no longer to be termed "insurgents" but are to be called "Al Qaeda in Iraq". We expect this new war against Al Qaeda to be much more popular than the old war against Insurgents. In all interaction with the press, every opportunity should be taken to use the term "Al Qaeda", and 25% of these should be the full "Al Qaeda in Iraq".

For example, this is an ideal response to a typical reporter’s question:

A special Pysch-Ops team is developing a new label for our enemy, in hopes of discovering a term more unpopular than "Al Qaeda". "Yellow-Green Bile" is showing promise, although testing is incomplete. At your own discretion, you may choose to refer to the enemy as "Yellow-Green Bile" or possibly "Yellow-Green Bile in Iraq", but until we receive more polling data the official enemy is now "Al Qaeda".

I had an iPhone before you did. So ha ha ha on you!

2007-06-27T08:54:00.000-07:00

I had my first iPhone in late 2000. It had a nice big touch screen with a few major icons to make phone calls, browse the web, or manage emails. A glowing review of that iPhone is here. That review ends with the minor complaint that the iPhone did not come with an SDK, and then with this prediction: "mark my keystrokes, in a few years, every phone will have the capabilities of this nifty little gizmo".

I had the iPhone because my company, Nombas, was working with InfoGear (who made the iPhone) to get a combination of client- and server-side scripting to work on the device. InfoGear was claiming that the touch-screen interface was so intuitive that anyone could use it to manage emails and to browse the web. So I gave it to my mother.

I won’t be giving mom a new iPhone.

Why I hate bottled water

2007-06-24T21:02:00.000-07:00

I just read that San Francisco banned bottled water. Right on, bottle-free city by the bay! I hope that the rest of the world follows your shining example (although that hasn't happened so far with cable-cars, pyramid buildings, or Twinkie-inspired political assassinations).

A lot of people hate the bottled-water fad, for a lot of reasons

Environmental: The most frequent complain against bottled water is its high environmental cost.

Financial: One of Mayor Newsom's reasons for banning bottled water is simply to save the city a lot of money.

Embarrassment: It just makes us feel stupid, as a species, if even Andy Rooney can see how easily we'll fall for the lure of paying for what is inferior to the free product.

Those are all good reasons to hate bottled water, but I have a bigger complaint. The primary reason I hate bottled water is social: if the bottled water trend continues it will soon lead to severe hardship for the poorest 20% of our society. Here’s how that will happen: As potable drinking water because privatized, through the growing tend to buy bottled water, affluent citizens will see fewer and fewer reasons to pay municipal fees to make tap water drinkable. (Current laws regulating the purity of tap water are stricter than those regulating bottled water. Meeting these strict standards costs money.) Affluent taxpayers will look at their water bills and think "I get my drinking water from bottles, I would never drink water from a tap. Why should I pay hard-earned money for something I never use?! I demand cheaper water. I demand smaller government, fewer special interest regulations, and taxpayer justice." These affluent taxpayers will stop funding such a high level of water purification and, soon, public water will no longer be pure enough to drink. Most people will be able to afford bottled water, but some, the poorest 20% of the economy, will not. The underclass will be forced to drink unsafe water from the tap.

And that’s my main complaint against privatized (a.k.a. bottled) water.

Think that won’t happen? Think again. We have plenty of examples of what transpires to society when a previously public resource becomes privatized. Always the bottom 20% get the shaft. It happened with public transportation when privatized transportation (a.k.a. the automobile) caught on (brilliantly documented in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"); the issue is now less about who has to move to the back of the bus than it is about finding a bus route that’s still in service. It happened again with the telephone: with so many affluent people now using privatized roaming phones (a.k.a. cell phones) the number of public phones (those that the poor rely on) has plummeted. In some areas we’re starting to see the same thing with privatizing security services versus the municipal police.

Let us learn from experience of other countries experimenting with privatization and see where that leads. Take Belgistan, for instance. Early in the previous century the Belgistanians were going through the same industrial revolution as were other European countries. The resulting air pollution problems plagued Belgistan, as it did other countries. But Belgistan took a different approach to solving the air pollution problem. Where other countries took steps to regulate clean air for all, Belgistan privatized clean air. The bulk of Belgistanians purified their indoor air, and when out in public wore oxygen tanks. The wealthiest of the Belgistanians purchased tanks of air imported from far-off exotic lands such as Tonga, Finland, and NYC. Middle-class Belgistanians bought more-generic brands of air, in bulk, from CostCo. The poorest 20% could not afford bottled air and just had to make do. As a result, these poor were often sick (the wealthier citizens wondered why the lazy underclass lacked the moral will to take care of themselves and their children), often missed work, or simply died without the good sense to call in to their employer first. Without a living, breathing underclass no one was left to mow lawns, wash pots in the restaurants, clean house, or do any of the other tasks that the superior 4/5ths of society are no longer able to perform (those skills having been lost through atrophy). The eventual collapse of the Belgistanian government, while not the sole reason behind Europe’s instabilities of the time, is certainly recognized by most historians as one of the precipitating causes of the continental slide into World War I.

There are numerous other historical examples of what happens to a society when public resources become privatized. For further research into this topic, I suggest the excellent documentary, Urinetown, about what happened when public urinals became privatized. Also, for the exception that proves the rule, look at the record of Stanstanistan, which recently reversed the privatization of sex (a.k.a. prostitution), made sex workers freely available to all citizens of every socioeconomic class, and is now a veritable utopia (I’d provide a link and more details on this story, but it has come to my attention that my recent blogs have been tagged as "possibly offensive" by some RSS readers, and so I leave it to you, dear reader, to conduct your own research into the flowering revitalization of Stanstanistan).

So what will our world be like when everything is privatized? The poor underclass will get wrenchingly sick on tap water (due to privatization of drinking water). They’ll be unable to catch a bus to the hospital (privatization having led to public transportation disappearing). They’ll be unable to call an ambulance (privatization having led to public pay-phones disappearing). If they do find a phone they’ll be unable to dial 911 (privatization of education leading to them being unable to count that high). If they do make it to the hospital, they’ll be unable to pay (privatized medicine). Their dead bodies will litter our sidewalks (privatization leading to all the poor people being dead, leaving no one to operate the leaf-blowers that clean our sidewalks). Do we really want that? Search your soul, America, do you really want messy sidewalks?

And it all begins with bottled water. I consider the public availability of potable drinking water (first accomplished on a large scale by the Romans) to be the single greatest advancement in the history of civilization (barely ahead of the invention of beer, and only slightly beating out the creation of the nonstop farting kitty). This greatest of all civic achievements is being undermined by bottled water, and San Francisco is coming to the rescue.

End of part 1. Next week: Government of Poopoopistan finds itself in deep doo doo after banning public toilets.

Send me an iPhone or the duckling gets it!

2007-06-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

Dear Apple,

I’d like an iPhone now, please.

I just bought a new mobile phone. It’s a T-Mobile Wing, and while it’s very sexy (touch screen, vertical/landscape modes, mail, maps, mp3 player, etc…) it’s simply not as sexy as an iPhone. I’ve had the Wing two days now and it hasn’t got me laid once, while the iPhone is so sexy I’m sure the women would have been all over me for these two days, completely bypassing me in some cases to have sex with the iPhone directly.

If I return my Wing within a short "trial period" I get a full refund and am not locked in for two years. So I’m on a short schedule here. Can I have an iPhone now?

No?!!

A couple of your Apple folks were at my retirement party the other night both claiming not to have an iPhone, but we could see those bulges in their pants. All night long we had to endure them sliding their hands provocatively into their pockets to multi-touch their handhelds. But they absolutely refused to whip out their sexy devices so we could all see and touch and ogle. One of them all but admits, here, that all Apple employees are walking around us everyday with iPhones but refusing to share. I’m frankly starting to get a little angry with you, Apple, you and your smug employees.

I try to be a peaceful man. I try to keep certain urges under control. And I am definitely not making any threats (I do not intend to get any more restraining orders filed against me this summer), but… Let me just tell you a little story:

I live along the water’s edge. Outside my back door, every day, are beautiful geese and ducks, sometimes cranes, pelicans, and so on. Beautiful birds. On any given day I’m able to look right out the back window, onto my porch, and see a momma duck sleeping with her adorable little ducklings (it’s the season soon after ducklings have hatched and are just learning to swim and walk). Adorable!

It’s funny how the birds sleep with their heads turned around 180 degrees against their backs. Now suppose someone were to suddenly make a loud noise outside the window as these ducklings were sleeping—I’m not making any threats that this will happen, mind you, this is all just idle chit-chat—perhaps with a giant blast from a trumpet—not my trumpet, mind you, not the one I keep in my closet, I’m not that cruel, not me, I’m just using this as a theoretical example—those ducklings, asleep with their heads turned around 180°, would probably be so startled that they wouldn’t have time to remember "did I turn my head 180° to the left, or was it to the right" and so they’d have to just guess which way to turn their heads to straighten out again, and in their startled haste they’d only have a 50% chance of guessing correctly. If any of the above events were to happen—I’m not saying it will happen, just theorizing—half the adorable little ducklings would make the wrong guess, would turn their heads the wrong way, and so would snap their own necks and die right there on the spot.

Restful quiet. A trumpet’s blare. A barely discernible crack and the tiniest little squeak. Quiet again. So young. So tragic.

These are cute little birds, Apple. I’d hate for something to happen to them. I’ll do my best to protect them, but, honestly Apple, who knows what I’m capable of if I’m continually taunted by your sexy iPhone ads flaunting revolutionary but unavailable devices while your hoity-toity employees walk around with iPhones in their pants and getting laid at every turn while the rest of us can just push our buttons and make our phone calls.

Think of the bad publicity when word gets out that Apple does not do what it can to protect waterfowl. Remember how bad the publicity was for Exxon when images of all those oil-covered birds appeared soon after one of their captains pissed me off by cheating me at poker one night aboard the Valdez!

Dear Apple, Don't you care about protecting the waterfowl?

I’d like an iPhone now, please.

P.S. I’m thinking of getting a puppy.

Happy Birthday Dad, from your extended family.

2007-06-19T10:32:00.000-07:00

My dad, Ray Noorda, would have been 83 today. His co-workers put together this short video tribute soon after he died last October. My favorite part: "...a little bit on what's been said about 2.1 ... it puts us on the road to 2.2."

Dad was commonly known as "The Father of Network Computing", which makes me "The Brother of Network Computing". Many of his fellow 12,000 employees, along with thousands of CNEs, VARs, and others in "the channel" called him "Uncle Ray", which makes all of them "The Cousins of Network Computing". It's a big extended family--I don't know exactly how big--at least 20,000 usually show up at The Family Reunion of Network Computing. I'm in charge of potato salad this year, 625 gallons of it. I hope everyone likes the kind with lots of mayonnaise and a little celery, onion, and mustard, because that's the way I make it.

Hey Indians, thanks for nothing!

2007-06-16T17:01:00.000-07:00

I’m retired now. Again.

People keep asking me, "what are you going to do now that you’re retired," and I say "Nothing. A whole lot of nothing." Sometimes I’ll say "maybe I’ll study physics again" by which of course I also mean "nothing" since nothing is the biggest thing happening in modern physics.

Nothing is very important to me these days. As the bohemian royalty of rhapsodic rock once sang "nothing really matters to me". To understand the topic deeper I began reading "the book of nothing" by the physicist john d. barrow. The beginning of the book talks about the invention of the number 0 as both a place-filler and as a concept meaning nothing. It was the Indians who first understood this number and concept deeply, thousands of years ago. The Indians had a rich history in the concept of nothingness, emptiness, beginning and endness, the void that is all, and zero. The Indians were the first to really “get” zero.

Here in Silicon Valley, world center of computing technology, Indians are everywhere, and that’s a good thing because without the Indians, Silicon Valley would just be Valley. This is because the modern computer is based on a binary system of ones and zeros. Were it not for the Indians, fully half of the digits used in computers would not exist, computers would not exist, and my job would not exist from which I could retire. So thank you, Indians. Thanks for nothing!

Contrast the Indian technology with the Mayans. At about the same time Indians were doing lots of fancy base-10 calculations, including zeros, the Mayans were using base 20 (a symbol for each number from one to twenty), but no zero. The Mayans attempted to bootstrap a base-20 computer industry, but with no zero they were missing 5% of what they needed for decent calculations. The Mayan computers sucked! They were terrible! So bad, in fact, that the only program they ever managed to create was PowerPoint, which, thousands of years later, would be universally recognized as the most useless, destructive program ever written.

With PowerPoint as their only computing tool, the collapse of the Mayan civilization was inevitable; as inevitable as is the collapse of any organization that makes its decisions based on PowerPoint slides. This is why Mayan society ceased long ago but Indian society and Silicon Valley are still vibrant.

Vannevar Bush

Gore

Ugg created only one computer with no other nodes to connect to
Ugg’s short-sighted two-byte addressing scheme, known as ipv2, would not have been large enough to make it even through the bronze age
Ugg did not open-source the project, so of course it was no good
Ugg’s computer quickly filled up with 99% porn and spam

was

So that’s what I’ve been able to learn in just the first half of my first day of idle retirement. It goes to show: Everything is interesting if you look at it deep enough, and that includes nothing.

I am not boring.

2007-06-05T21:35:00.000-07:00

If you knew me only by my previous “squirrel” post, you’d think I’d spent the entire weekend watching a Heroes marathon on Tivo, and you would think I was a completely nerdy waste case. But I’m not. Watching Heroes isn’t the only thing I did this weekend, not by a long shot. I also spent the other 22 waking hours of the weekend transferring all my data and software from a very old and slow PC to one that was only slightly less old and only slightly less slow, while documenting the experience at my other blog site. So you see, I’m not a total geeky dufus loser!

Save the cheerleader. Save the squirrel.

2007-06-03T16:23:00.000-07:00

I was at home sick all weekend—stuffy, achy, miserable. So I had time crawl onto the couch, scrunch under a pile of blankets, and catch up on about ten hours of the Heroes marathon I’d Tivo’ed last weekend.

If you’re unfamiliar with Heroes, this summary will save you ten hours: Around the world there are people who, due to genetic mutations, have special powers. There’s a mind-reader, a self-healer, someone who can fly, someone who can paint the future, a time-space bender, a kid who can interact with electronics, and so on. Each person is at first ashamed by their difference, grapples with what’s wrong with them, learns to accept that they’re unique, overcomes the shame, and begins the search for their place in the new future they’ve accepted. So Heroes is basically an allegory, in televised comic-book form, about homosexuality in the 21st century. (Isn’t it obvious?)

These ten hours of concentrated TV viewing have put me into a mental state where I finally feel empowered to out myself to the world.

World. It’s me. Brent. I, too, have heroic super powers, and I’m not afraid to admit it. It’s who I am.

God, it feels good to finally say that!

I hope I won’t feel sorry about this when I’ve recovered from my illness. I hope this isn’t like the time 20 years ago when I was totally out of my head sick and watched a fictionalized TV show about terrorists blowing up a major US city with a nuclear bomb and was completely convinced it was real (despite the repeated commercial interruptions and ending credits followed by the 11 O’clock news with no mention of the US having just lost a major city). I was so very panicky. And feverish.

My particular super power is that I’m able to find things under water. These special abilities are due to three sub-powers:

I sink in water. Even when I’ve gained a lot of weight, my blubber is somehow dense.
I can hold my breath a long time.
I have no fear of sickeningly gross gooey grossness.

That last sub-power is probably the most important when searching for items dropped into marinas where people dock their pleasure craft, and the water is so dirty that you couldn’t see anything even if you did have a face mask, and the dropped item sinks into a foot of amazingly gooey muckiness, and you realize that a lot of people empty their boat’s “head” tank directly into the marina, and further realize that when people say “shit floats” they’re lying. It has taken a lot of training to hone this important sub-power of grossness—-years of never wearing underwear and, when I had to start wearing underwear (due to the nutty incident), of never changing a pair until it wore itself out (turns out that all clothing is biodegradable if you wear it long enough).

I’ve only had to use this find-things-underwater superpower twice in my lifetime, so far. But I’m ready. When the cheerleader needs me, I’m ready. When the squirrel needs me, I’m ready for that, too.

Sylar

think

There you have it. I exposed myself and it feels so good. If you have a superpower, feel free to tell us about it in the comments section. You’ll be surprised how (super)empowering it is.

L&O Q&A

2007-05-25T06:49:00.000-07:00

Q: WWLS?
A: Stick a fork in it, she's done.

Lost? No. Misdirected.

2007-05-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

Every contemporary conversation between three or more people degenerates into a discussion of Lost. It has been that way for a year or more. In the break room, over dinner, in the elevator, backstage at political rallies, during bank robberies, it always ends up “Do you watch Lost? what do you think is going on? Where are they? Are they alive? Aliens? Here’s my theory… But what I don’t get…” and so on. Eventually the most scholarly person in the bunch will make the inevitable comparison between “Lost” and “Gilligan’s Island”, due not just to obvious plot and character development, but also to encompassing thematic subtexts (both philosophical and comedic).

By now, we all get it. We’ve all had that a-ha moment when we realize that Lost is little more than an episode-by-episode duplication of Gilligan’s Island, with one half-hour’s worth of extra head-scratching weirdness to keep us talking around the water cooler. That kind of insight used to be a revelation but is now just old news, as documented by hard-hitting investigative entertainment journalists here, here, and especially here.

But it goes so much deeper than that, deep into a sinister land of… um… sinisterness.

When was that last time a TV show was so riveting, so unpredictable, and so well-crafted in its episodic development that all polite conversation turned to unraveling its mysteries? You’d have to go back forty years (give or take four days) to find that preceding show and it would, of course, be Gilligan’s Island.

A typical cocktail party conversation forty years ago (give or take four days) would have gone something like this: “Did you see G.I. last night? That is some crazy island. And that Gilligan! What will he do next? Will they ever get off that island? How come they never have babies? It’s been two years, with the gorgeous movie star Ginger and the heartwarming girl-next-door Marianne, and no babies. Is that island like one of those newfangled contraceptive pills, or what?” Then they’d be talking over martinis all night long trying to figure out when Gilligan and friends would get off the island, why the movie star brought so many clothes, where all the other visitors come from and go to, and so on.

What those mid-60’s cocktail partiers WOULDN’T be talking about would be THE WAR.

The US war in Vietnam had been going on for years when, earlier in 1964, a half-fabricated attack in the Gulf of Tonkin led to a resolution abused by the Johnson administration as an excuse for rapid escalation of the war against Vietnam. Anti-war protests were just beginning, and closer public scrutiny of these events would only lead to an increase in protests. Johnson needed to end more protests before they began. He needed the people to have something else to talk about, something so compellingly interesting that they WOULDN’T be talking about THE WAR. So he signed a secret executive order to create Gilligan’s Island, assigning his top speech writers to the task, and even penning a few of the initial episodes himself (all of which is well-documented here). Johnson needed 108 episodes (108!), just enough to last through his presidency.

Flash forward to forty years later when president Bush needed people to talk about something other than THE WAR. So he turned to the last time a Texan was president and was in a similar keep-people’s-minds-off-the-war predicament. Bush, by secret executive copycat order, ordered a remake of every episode of Gilligan’s Island, called it “Lost”, and filled in enough mumbo-jumbo from his Yale Skull & Bones college ceremonies to make each episode last for one hour.

So that’s what’s going on people! We’re being tricked by our president, again. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. I.E. It’s a rerun!

Need more proof that Lost is just a Bush trick so we WON’T be talking about THE WAR? How about this: Misdirecting the public via a TV show about castaways is a stupid idea—proven to be stupid because it already failed one president. Stupid ideas are a hallmark of the Bush presidency. This idea is so very completely and utterly stupid that it all but bears the fingerprint of our current president. There’s your smoking gun. Ipso Facto. Proof Complete.

So, let’s all stop talking about Lost now, OK. Let’s talk about what’s really important. LET’S TALK ABOUT THE WAR!

(But before we talk about THE WAR—I promise, we can get back to THE WAR in a minute—could someone please explain last night’s episode to me. It was a flash-forward, right? What a shocker! But didn’t Jack say his father was in the hospital? Which would mean that his father was alive, right? But Jack’s father was dead on the flight. And whose funeral was it that no one attended? Was Jack trying to kill himself, or was jumping off the bridge going to bring him back to the island? Is everyone turning on Ben? Where’d Walt come from? Locke? WTF?)

WWJD (in Cincinnati)

2007-05-13T08:52:00.000-07:00

I love Jesus soooooo much. I have a huge man-crush on him. I love Jesus mostly for these reasons:

He suffered for our sins, so that we may have eternal salvation in the presence of God.
I like that he can be my personal savior, but also your personal savior. It’s nice to share.
He made it seem cool to dress and talk like a hippy.

And he did these things 2000 years ago (way before it was trendy).

Recently I was greatly dismayed to learn from this blog that my good and honorable friend Ryan Perry is an atheist, having been led astray by Richard Dawkins (and Satan).

It hurts me to think that Jesus suffered for those two atheists. What a terrible waste. I hate to think of my beloved Jesus in so much extra pain (Jesus would never take the easy out by calling out his safe word from the cross).

Did I mention that I love Jesus soooooo much? I love Jesus so much that I hope Dan Brown’s next novel proves, with his inimitable style of irrefutable and impeccably-researched evidence, that the Church has been suppressing the information that Jesus was actually a woman. Then I can love Jesus in a way that is not such an abomination in the eyes of our Lord.

So I’m thinking, What Would Jesus Do?: If someone he loved were suffering for another’s sins, What Would Jesus Do? Jesus would take that suffering on himself. So that’s what I want to do. I want to remove Jesus’ suffering for Ryan and Richard, and transfer that suffering onto myself.

Let us pray:

Dear God, I am grateful that you sent your favorite son Jesus to suffer for my sins, but please don’t make Jesus waste his suffering for the sins of Ryan Perry and Richard Dawkins. Please take that burden from Jesus and lay it instead on me. God, this suffering already happened 2000 years ago, I understand, but you are all-powerful and so I know that if you really put your mind to it you can figure out a way to retroactively remove Jesus’ suffering for those two atheists and pass it forward to me (perhaps you can slingshot it around the sun through time, like in Star Trek IV). Thank you, God. Keep up the good work. Amen.

FCE4AAA: Financial Code of Ethics For Adolescents of All Ages

2007-05-09T22:56:00.000-07:00

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, and I hacked as a child. I also stole stuff. This week I rediscovered that inner child.

Digg pisses off “the old me”

Last week Digg had a brouhaha over the “censorship” of a certain 16-byte number. At that time I felt that Digg should not have caved in and allowed the number to be published on its site. At that time I felt that Digg users were a bunch of whining adolescents, without one creative bone in their collective body. Had I written this blog at that time it would have gone something like this:

You sniveling adolescents. Leave that 16-byte number alone. That number was created by someone else, and it’s sufficiently long that they have every right to decide how it be used, shared, or not-shared. If you don’t like it then go out and make a long number of your own, then copyright it, sell it, give it away, whatever you want to do with it. Or is that too hard for you, Digg-child? Can’t create a number of your own so you have to copy one? How pathetic. Can’t create web content of your own (because you have no original thoughts, do you?) so you have to go around clicking on “digg this” icons, and pretend that that makes you part of a “community”? You think that a bunch of snot-nosed kids clicking on icons makes “user-powered content”. Give me a break! You’re not cool.

Fine, you need a number to copy? Here’s one. I hereby copyright this number and declare that anyone is free to copy it as much as they wish.

41 6E 79 74 68 69 6E 67 20 73 75 66 66 69 63 69 65
6E 74 6C 79 20 76 61 67 75 65 20 73 68 61 6C 6C 20
61 6C 77 61 79 73 20 72 69 6E 67 20 74 72 75 65 2E

Now get a job!

But that was last week. I’ve since had a major change of mind--a “Saul on the road to Damascus” moment. Now I’ve seen the light.

How I got to be “the old me”

Until a few days ago I was a staunch advocate of “content creator’s rights”, which is the idea that whoever originates intellectual property has the right to determine how that IP is used. I used to get totally pissed at people who “shared” music without paying, “shared” software without paying, “shared” movies and source code and so on. Until a few days ago I used to say stuff like, “those artists and engineers and musicians and key grips and so on have worked hard, and taking their stuff without paying is like stealing”. Until a few days ago I would tell people “if you want music to be free then go spend years and years learning to play an instrument, write original songs, compose, arrange, control the soundboard, and when you have your original piece of art you have every right to release it just as free as you want”. I had a similar story regarding software, and movies. That old “censorial” me did things like write a secret software program that would seek out all the songs my son downloaded on Napster and add random noise and pops to the files. That old me enjoyed the fact that his Napster would then pass those now-ruined songs to other P2P “sharers”. The old me wanted RMS to mind his own beeswax and stop telling me how I ought to control my intellectual property.

I wasn’t always this way. When I was an adolescent I had a large collection of cassette tapes recorded from my friends’ albums. I joined the Columbia Record Club twice just for the free ten albums, only to record the albums and return them for a full refund. As an adolescent, I was once in K-Mart with a friend who slipped the latest ELO album into her coat and left without paying. I felt a tad bit guilty over being an accomplice in that theft, but those feelings of guilt did not prevent me from making a cassette recording of that album. It was easy to justify: Jeff Lynne didn’t need my money and, anyway, where did he get off making a double album when there was only a single album’s worth of good music in there. When I was an adolescent I broke through the copy protection schemes on dozens of computer games, and let some middle-aged guy take those protection-free games and distribute them. It was such an interesting challenge that I didn’t think twice that I may be depriving some programmers of their daily bread.

So where did my “anti-freedom” ideas come from? When did I stop being such an adolescent? Part of it may have been a backlash to my experience from when I used to write the CEnvi shareware program. I don’t know how many times I would run across CEnvi users who would tell me how much they loved the program and used it all the time, only to learn they’d never actually paid for it. When the 2600 group posted a code to register my software without paying for it, it annoyed the hell out of me because it meant my kids had no shoes to wear and I had to take the family to the local dive-in for dinner (where “dive-in” was our cute family euphemism for “dumpster diving for dinner because dad has no money for food because people are copying his shareware without paying”)

That A-ha moment that leads to “the new me”

Somewhere along the way I grew up. And that’s sad. I didn’t realize how sad until very recently when my wife, Amy, somehow got stuck with a counterfeit twenty dollar bill. Nobody would take this $20. Nobody! There she was with an almost-perfectly good looking $20 and she couldn’t buy coffee, or shoes, or candy. Nothing.

I suddenly realized: That’s just wrong. If somebody can copy something, they have every right to use it. Right? Why should the US Government have some sort of “trademark” on who can make currency and who cannot?!! That is TOTALLY unfair. It’s a violation of our freedom of speech. It’s just wrong. I want to spend that $20 dammit!

I GET IT NOW! DIGGNATION, I GET IT!

Call to action

Let us not put up with this tyranny any longer. I call on all Digg users, here and now. Stand up for our rights and let’s put an end to this censorship of the currency of ideas, and the currency of currency.

All Digg users, do the following right away (don’t think, just do it):

Gather together any $20s you can find (you're probably unemployed, so digg around in your mother's purse).
Scan those $20s (front and back).
Post those scans on Digg and on any other site you can find.
“digg” all links to posted images of $20s
Post more scans (as many serial numbers as we can get because you can’t “own” a number, right?)

If we all work together in cooperation (“community”) we can flood Digg with $20 scans, links to scans, and links to links, until they cave in to our demands. Then send all those scans to your printers as a record of this historic moment on the road to freedom.

We will not be censored!

“Nuts to Mr. Goodwrench”, or “This week I solve the nation’s healthcare crisis”

2007-04-28T10:03:00.000-07:00

This week I figured out how to solve America’s healthcare financial crisis. Maybe the world’s. Thank you, very much. Aw shucks, tweren’t nothin’.

But first a little story:

One phrase you don’t want to hear from your doctor while he’s cupping your nutsack: “How long has it been like this?” Another is: “This is really quite big”. And: “You need to see a specialist.” And: “I wouldn’t wait if I were you.”

I looked down to see what all the fuss was about. Sure enough my left sack was probably ten times the volume of the right one. Maybe 20. (Rational measurement of dimensions is difficult in that region of a man’s own body.)

He asked, “Have you had an injury down there?”

I thought back and couldn’t remember any particular injury. In retrospect, it had been uncomfortable and occasionally a little painful for a while. But, thinking back, I couldn’t remember any particular moment of injury. “Not that I can remember,” I said.

So I went to see the man who specializes in nutsacks, whom I’ll call Dr. Goodwrench. (Nuts. Dr. Goodwrench. Get it?) First he had a technician with warm hands and warmer oils (should have got her phone number) do an ultrasound. He studied those results, then took a look at the Problem Area for himself. “Some good news and some bad news. First, the good news: It’s not the Big C.”

…by “Big C” Dr. Goodwrench was of course referring to the most terrible news any man fears when there’s a nutsack issue. Big C refers, of course, to Clitoris-at-forty-four, that tragic and very confusing medical ailment that sometimes strikes men at precisely my age. Good news indeed!…

“and now the bad news. It’s not the Big C, but it is Big. Too big for a simple operation. We need to schedule a time when you have some weeks to recover. This type of problem usually follows an injury of some kind. Do you remember any kind of injury, could be from a year or two back?”

I’d already been thinking about this from visiting the first doctor. But still I had no memory of a time when I’d injured my balls very bad. “Gee, no. I don’t remember anything.”

So we scheduled the surgery, it went OK, hurt a little less than was expected, and I got to lay around the house for a while watching videos and downing vicodin.

…I know, I know, I said that I solved the healthcare crisis. I’m getting to that. patience…

A week or so later I went back to the hospital where I’d had the operation. In entering the hospital I flashed back to about two years earlier when I suddenly remember that I had been there before. Two years earlier I had been in that very hospital to get a colonoscopy. Because of a family history of colon cancer a colonoscopy was a recommended procedure. I’ve known two people with colon cancer and they both assured me that getting through it was a total “pain in the ass” (can you believe they both came up with the same extremely clever pun?) and the colonoscopy was worth it just to be sure.

During the colonoscopy they shove a small camera on a flexible tube up your ass and through the plumbing there looking for any problems. Because it’s not a particularly pleasant procedure it involves, at least in my case, the administration of a very interesting drug that does not make you unconscious at all, but it does make you unable to form a memory. It was such a weird moment in my life. I looked at the clock and it was 11:00. The nurse told me to roll onto my side, and then a few seconds later she told me that they were finished and that I could roll onto my back again. I couldn’t believe they’d done the procedure in just a few seconds, but I looked at the clock and is said 11:45. Either (A) they had lied to me and simply moved the minute hand up by 45 minutes, or (B) they had done the colonoscopy and their drug made me forget anything that had happened for 45 minutes, or possibly (C) I had been abducted by aliens who probed me analy and force me to forget, but that amounts to the same thing as (B) which is only slightly more plausible.

Then, as I was entering the hospital last week, remembering the colonoscopy weirdness, it hit me. Consider:

Some injury had happened to my nutsack in the previous couple of years, but I couldn’t remember it.
I’d been in that hospital for 45 minutes during which, because of the anti-memory-forming drug, they could have done ANYTHING to me and I wouldn’t remember it.
I have good insurance, which will pay that hospital for any operations I need.
The only ones who would benefit from me having a nutsack injury were likely to be the hospital, to which I’d be returning in the future for an operation.

The only bloggable conclusion: Someone in the hospital had used that 45 minutes to inflict an injury to my nutsack that would lead to me coming back to that hospital in the future for another profitable operation.

…this type of make-future-work business trick is often used in many fields of service. Take, for instance, the auto mechanic who loosens a nut (how appropriate!) during your oil change to make sure that something bad happens to your car soon for a bigger repair bill. Or the dentist who, during a cleaning, makes a few nicks (a.k.a. future cavities) in your teeth. Or, to bring it back to the healthcare industry now that I’m starting to realize they’re no more moral in business than anyone else, the philandering abortionist. But I digress…

So there I was with my suspicions that the hospital injured me during my first visit just to make future business for themselves. But how could I prove it? I wondered: I have no memory of those 45 minutes. If only I’d had some recording of what happened during those forty….

Then I figured it out. A HA! Eureka! That’s it! During those 45 minutes they claimed they were filming my colon. Maybe they saved a recording of that colonoscopy. It’s quite possible that in that recording, with a clever CSI-like processing of the film, we could determine and prove that some impact to a nearby part of my anatomy (to wit: my nutsack) took place. There, in that movie of my colonoscopy, would be my proof!

And at that moment I realized how to save the healthcare industry. You see, with growing high expectations, high lawsuits, high costs of education, and the requirement to treat too many uninsured, healthcare costs have just grown too high. Many hospitals have had to close in recent years because of financial problems. You can hardly blame the hospitals if a few of them resort to the make-future-work practices that I have just about proven here.

But hospitals have a huge untapped source of revenue. Consider all the money made out of web 2.0, socially-networked, user-generated, ad-revenued content. What the hospitals need to do is to take all those movies of colonoscopies and put them on the web. Who wouldn’t want to watch a colonoscopy of the day, or of the hour, or of celebrities or politicians, or rated by their peers for class- or racially-linked uncleanliness or signs or gerbility, even if they do have to put up with a few revenue-generating advertisements? Hell, many companies will probably pay the hospital, who could share revenue with patients, to swallow tiny billboards the day before the procedure.

The hospitals are sitting on a gold mine! Healthcare crisis solved!.

Oh, the name of this new health-care-crisis-saving web site: YourTube

Bad investment in a hostile takeover, and a proposed exit plan

2007-04-21T09:15:00.000-07:00

For years I’ve been investing a huge percentage of my income into a single stock. It hasn’t been going well. Some years ago the 9-person board appointed a new CEO, over the complaints of a majority of activist shareholders, and that CEO has turned out to be a major idiot. There have been an amazing number of missed investment opportunities, squandered chances at strategic partnerships, overspending; I could go on and on but all of those problems are overwhelmed by a single humongous error: Early in his term this new CEO initiated a hostile takeover of a smaller organization that he had convinced his top staff was a threat, and they in turn initiated a PR campaign to convince most of the shareholders of this threat, and that the only solution was a hostile takeover.

The hostile takeover was expensive, but at first it went well. The stock price of both organizations rose in the first few weeks. United Storage Associates (symbol: USA), in whom I invest about 1/3 of my money, was at a new high for the decade, and the stock price for International Rocks And Quarries (symbol: IRAQ), the takeover target, was through the roof.

That bubble didn’t last long. Fortunes of USA and IRAQ (now a wholly owned subsidiary of USA) have plummeted. The whole thing has been a money pit, and personnel have been lost in the hundreds of thousands.

It’s not unusual for a hostile takeover to go badly. So we shouldn’t be surprised. And we shouldn’t waste time complaining about the past. This is business. We need only look at the future and ask, How do we take this bad investment and turn it into an opportunity? We need to explore strategic alternatives. To anyone with an iota of wall-street savvy, “explore strategic alternatives” translates into: time to broker an acquisition for this failed investment. In other words, USA needs to sell IRAQ, cut its losses, and run.

But who would want to acquire IRAQ from USA?

It’s worth noting that the stock value of International Rocks And Nuggets (symbol: IRAN) has been rising lately, as they’ve recently been showing results of their innovation programs in the field of energy research. IRAN has recently been a tempting takeover target for USA, but IRAN has made it clear that they will violently fight any such attempts. Due to past hostilities between the two organizations (IRAN was aligning with USA’s competitors, USA forced a CEO on IRAN, IRAN was overly aggressive in recruiting and maintaining some of USA’s top workers, USA locked assets and broke contracts, and so on….), USA has stated that it is not willing to negotiate with IRAN.

But I say that it’s a terrible mistake for the USA not to negotiate with IRAN in this matter. Over the years IRAN has often expressed interest in acquiring IRAQ, and their interest has not waned. It’s in USA’s interest to get rid of the entire IRAQ division, and admit that sometimes hostile takeovers just don’t work. Negotiate already! Let’s make this deal happen.

OK, by now the more astute among have you realized that I’m not really talking about corporations, and that USA, IRAN, & IRAQ are not really NYSE stock symbols but are really the names of countries.

The less astute (symbol: DUMB) may now re-read the above and marvel at how clever I was at using the powers of metaphor to recast a familiar enigma in a new light, thus making the solution obvious. And what is that solution? The USA should sell Iraq to Iran. This gets rid of USA’s problems, transfers those problems to Iran, which will keep Iran busy for so long that they won’t give USA any more problems for years. The USA can also benefit by getting some of its hundreds of billions dollars back on this deal if they can get Iraq to pay enough--hint, skip the United Nations (symbol:UN) and go directly to Ebay, with England and Australia entering fake bids to drive the price up.

Doesn’t take a genius to make correct change

2007-04-14T11:55:00.000-07:00

I had a couple of strange dinners this week, catching up with old friends at restaurants. The meals themselves weren’t all that unusual, but paying for them was.

On Monday I ate at a nice restaurant with my old buddy Schrödinger. When the check came we calculated that, with tip, the total should be $100. We agreed to pay $50 each. It so happens that each of us had loaded up at the ATM on our respective ways to the restaurant, and all that either of us found in our wallets was $20s. Schrödinger is not as patient as I am, and wasn’t willing to wait for the waiter to bring back any change, so he said “you put in $60, I’ll put in $40. That’s $100 and we’re out of here. I’ll owe you $10. Don’t worry; I’m good for it. In fact, I’ll pay you the $10 right now.” Saying this, Schrödinger put another $20 on the table. “We’ll split this $20 right here and now.”

In the next instant Schrödinger grabbed the twenty, shuffled it in his hands behind his back, then held out both of his fists before me, saying “You may want to think that one of these hands holds a $20 and the other hand is empty, and so the $20 bill has an equal probability of being in either hand. But the correct way to view it, dear observer and student of my equation, is that the $20 is neither in my left hand nor my right hand, yet it is simultaneously in both my left hand and my right hand. It is a superposition of states that you cannot directly observe. You may quite correctly interpret my equation as showing that each hand is holding $10. All you have to do is pick one of the two equivalent $10 hands and you will be repaid.”

I was staring at his hands, carefully thinking it over: This behavior is weird. How much had we had to drink? Let’s see, we’d each ordered a beer when we sat at the table. I’d had a second, and I thought he’d had the same. But you know those Germans and their beer, maybe he’d ordered a lot more. Wait, was he German? Austrian maybe? I wonder if he knew the Von Trapp family. Do all Austrian’s know Edelweiss? Are all Austrian nannies as hot as Julie Andrews? Does he know Julie… Wow, his fists are starting to squeeze really tight; look how red and shaky they’re getting—and his knuckles are getting whiter…

He must have been growing impatient with me. He nearly yelled “Collapse the system into an eigenstate!”

“Huh?”

“Pick a damn fist already!!!”

“You don’t have to yell. This isn’t going to turn into the Monty Hall question, is it? I don’t understand that Monty Hall question. OK, OK, I’ll take the left one. ”

He threw the $20 that was in his left fist (crumpled, but still legal tender) at me. And stood up in a huff.

“Sweet!” I said. “I win. In the end this meal cost me $40 and you $60” (I’m no dummy; I can do the math”) “You paid more so you can have the leftovers to bring home to your cat. If you still have a cat.” (Honestly, I’m glad it turned out that he paid more than I did. The meal wasn’t really worth more than $40, and he’d picked the damn overpriced restaurant. I don’t see why piling salmon on top of the starch, rather than next to the starch, and dribbling a thin string of black goo around the edges, adds at least $10 to the tab.)

A couple of nights later I went to a different restaurant with my friend Occam. After a very nice meal, and a carafe of the house wine, sure enough the bill (with tip) came to $100, and both of us had only twenties. We each owed $50 and each had only $20s.

Now it was my turn to look smart. “No problem,” I said “you put in $60, I’ll put in $40. That’s $100 and we’re out of here. I’ll owe you $10. Don’t worry; I’m good for it. In fact, I’ll pay you the $10 right now.” I put another $20 on the table. “We’ll split this $20 right here and now.”

In the next instant Occam grabbed the twenty, whipped out his ever-present razor, and sliced the bill right down the center, saying “once again, the simplest solution—in this case, how to split a twenty—tends to be the best one.”

Sheesh! I tell you, that is the last time I ever go to a restaurant with Occam. The last time! It always turns out poorly with him and that stupid razor he uses for everything. It gives me the creeps. This week wasn’t even the worst restaurant experience with Occam. One time I went to a steak house with Occam and some friend of his named Zeno (or maybe it was Xeno, or some friend from Reno—I’m not sure.) Zeno took great interest in the extremely sharp razor Occam was using to cut his steak, and Zeno insisted—insisted!—that Occam always cut his remaining piece of steak exactly in half. We were there all night! By the time they threw us out I ended up paying the entire $120 bill myself (with only $20s, of course) while Occam and Zeno fought with the manager because Occam wasn’t done eating yet.

My new rules of dining: 1) Bring bills in all denominations. 2) No more eating with frickin’ geniuses.

It's ALL Free Now

2007-04-08T09:19:00.000-07:00

Hey, all, this is Future Brent, from 2017. Some dude in Nairobi just invented backblogging and I’m trying it out to see if it really works. Blogging has needed a good kick in the pants to make it interesting again. Google (motto: “Don’t want to be evil, but we’re a public company”) will probably claim to invent backblogging a few years from now, and so maybe you’ve already heard all about it, but for now I want to be the first on the block to give backblogging a try.

This has been a significant day here in 2017. I’ve blogged a lot over the past ten years (as you will know) about the death of the rights of capitalism (now accepted commonly in 2017 as Brent’s Theory of the Death of the Rights of Capitalism, for which I was happy to receive the Nobel prize in Economics). Over the years I’ve often cried foul as direct financial exchange has been replaced by advertising-supported this or that, which by early 2017 had grown to take over almost every single aspect of our lives to the point that the only two products anyone actually paid money for were cans of Coke or Pepsi.

For example, a typical person’s sapcar (Solar Assisted Pedal Car) carries advertising throughout the seats, dashboard, windshield, starter, cup-holder, etc., for every product imaginable, which is ultimately ad-supported by either Coke or Pepsi. For example, while I’m driving down the road listening to my radio(1), I may notice that my rearview mirror is mostly an ad for Coppertone sunscreen (the mirror itself is hard to find). If I go to the store for that Coppertone sunscreen it is free to purchase because the entire Coppertone label is an ad for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, and so B&J reimburse the grocer directly for my sunscreen. B&J ice cream is fully ad-supported, through carton art and writing directly on the cherries and chips, by Six Flags theme parks whose entrance fees and rides are ad-supported by NBC, which is supported either by Pepsi commercials directly or by products that are (one way or another down the chain) supported by Pepsi ads. In the end, by early 2017 the only products that one can every actually pay cash money for are either Coke or Pepsi.

Until today, that is. In a remarkable event (but not unexpected by those who’ve read my blogs over the last ten years), Pepsi and Coke today announced that they would be cross-ad-supporting each other’s products. Coke will now be free, supported by the Pepsi ads that will now cover Coke cans, and vice versa.

So, as of today, there is no longer any legal product that can be purchased; cash is now defunct and will not longer be printed(2). There is no longer a reason to carry a wallet, except to carry pictures of the kids—but no one likes looking at pictures much anymore ever since every developing house started covering their free pictures with watermark ads behind which it is difficult to see the kid’s images.

Footnotes:

(1) You in 2007 may not recognize the radio of today. There are no more commercials in pop music radio, so our pure enjoyment of song never needs to be interrupted by crass commercialism. The recording industry never did figure out how to get people to pay for music, once the internet made copying so easy. Nowadays, every song is free and is itself a commercial for a product, usually Coke or Pepsi. Example: “Jenny, ooh ooh, let’s hump hump, aiiigh, hump our slump pumps, ooh ooh, work up a sweat, ooh ooh, so hot right now that I’ll need a refreshing Coca Cola, ooh baby baby”

(2) Due to lobbying by both the criminal and law-enforcement interests (both represented by the same lobbying agencies) cash will continue to be printed but only in 100 Dollar and 500 Euro denominations. Crime and crime-fighting interests argued, successfully, that they could not operate without cash, and that without their favored denominations the crime and crime-fighting industries would collapse and burden the already-weak economy with a huge influx of newly-unemployed workers.

My Twilight Zone – Making irony fun again

2007-03-18T01:14:00.000-07:00

I always wanted a hot tub. Always. I couldn’t imagine how anyone with a hot tub could ever be unhappy. I couldn’t imagine why anyone with a hot tub would ever leave it for longer that it took to fetch back a fancy tropical umbrella-drink. When the time came that I had excess income, of course I bought a hot tub. It was great, everything I’d imagined: a warm swishy cocoon of constant joy.

Not longer after that I started getting red, itchy, dry, scabby, skin problems.

Oh damn! Turns out that anything but the briefest touch of tepid water causes my skin to flair up with eczema. Isn’t it ironic? Dontcha think?

Irony is no fun, especially when it happens to oneself. Let’s change that. Let’s make irony fun again. Let’s make a game out of it.

The game shall be called My Twilight Zone. In My Twilight Zone (a.k.a. MTZ) the goal is for you to create, with the help of your parlor friends, an episode of Twilight Zone that best represents you. With enough understanding of yourself you will be able to describe an introduction, a couple of acts, and an ironic twist at the end (or creepy, or surprise, or this-sucks, but preferably ironic), along with opening and closing statements by a smoking Rod Serling narrator. It’s a fun little get-to-know-yourself-and-your-friends-better game. Or maybe it’s just gay. Same thing.

I can hardly see making an entire MTZ episode out of my hot tub story (fascinating and educational thought it may be). For a good MTZ I need to dig deeper into the real me, into what makes me tick--or what I think makes me tick.

I quite often claim that people are generally annoying and wish I were alone. Just me and nobody else. Doing what I want. Nobody to have to talk to, to argue with, to entertain, to console, to take up my time. So in my episode of MTZ here’s what happens: I’m introduced as someone who wants to be left alone to program, read, walk, play guitar, or just plain watch TV, but nice, well-meaning people keep interrupting my peaceful loneliness. Rod walks in, presents me, for consideration, as the man who wants to be left alone, all alone, and is about to get that wish fulfilled in “The Twilight Zone”. Through some strained contrivance I’m able to send everyone else on the planet to some happier place (I want to be nice in how I get rid of the entire human race; I’m not evil). Then I have it. I’m alone. For a while it’s all I ever wanted. And then what happens but my eczema starts to flare up again—perhaps I’ve been wandering alone too long in the dessert (where the cinematographer chooses to film part of this episode for the nice visuals showing how very alone I am)—and I start to itch. First the itching is just in my legs, and then hands. Eventually the itching reaches my back--not just any part of my back but those few square inches I cannot reach no matter how hard I stretch my arm down from the top or up from the bottom. It’s a constant itch I just can’t scratch and there’s nobody, nobody, no body, to scratch it for me. No. No. Noooooooooo!

That’s My Twilight Zone.

The week Google stopped being evil

2007-03-01T21:01:00.000-08:00

Computer programmers can all join me in joyful celebration this week because Google has stopped being evil: Google has decided give us back our respect by finally charging money for software with Google Apps Premier Edition.

During most of my 20+ years in the industry, computer programming was a noble profession. We worked hard, and if we made good product we charged money for our efforts, got paid, got laid, bought shoes for our kids, and so on. All that started to change when Google exploded with wealth based on giving everything away for free. Suddenly it appeared that all software would be given away for free--a programmer's output wasn't worth money anymore. Even worse, Google's formula for success wasn't based on programming at all, it was based on advertising. Advertising! No longer were programmers smart, noble, hard workers, in league with Einstein and Turing and Knuth. We were now just ad-men, like Darren Stevens but without the hot witch-wife! (Sorry, Amy, I mean other programmers-turned-advertisers don't have the hot witch wife.) And all this was Google's fault. Google was being evil.

But now Google has seen the wickedness of their ways. They aren't giving it all away for free anymore. Software is respectable again. Google has been exorcized of it's evil. Hallelujah!

(Am I going to have to start paying for keyhole again? Oh, crap!)

My Second First Blog

2007-03-01T20:16:00.000-08:00

This is my second attempt to enter the blogger age. Less than a week ago I started with vox, but that made me unhappy because people couldn't respond to my provocative posts with comments without logging in. So now blogger gets its chance. I've also heard that blogger does ad-revenue sharing, so I can also get rich from that nano-cents I receive on every ad dollar. Here come the dough.