More useful stuff!:
Fill in the blanks: a loaf of ___, a container of ___, and a stick of ___.
Something that is fun to say: "the angry man has tiny genitals."
$ stty sane
It's time to tell the truth. I am a 55 year-old man. My name is Andy Kaufman, and I live in New York City.
I am sincerely sorry to everyone for all my lies.
--Andy
Just curious: do you have a citation for that quote?
Yep... Joel Stein in the April 18, 2003 issue of Entertainment Weekly.
The full quote is:
"I found the most convincing part to be the working stiffs," said Valenti of the PSA, "the guys who have a modest home and kids who go to public schools. They make $75,000 to $100,000 a year. That's not much to live on. I don't have to tell you that," he said, vastly overestimating the U.S. poverty level and what I get paid for this column.
Funny part is, when they started actually showing the PSAs before movies, apparently they dropped the ones starring Ben Affleck, and only went with the "working stiffs."
Here's a little something to excite you:
Thanks to India for inventing the base 10 zero. Where would we be without it?
What a clever play on words I made
Next journal topic: Coming soon!
When you learned to drive a car, you probably knew a little about it. There's an engine, it burns gas, that causes the wheels to go around. The gas pedal must have something to do with that burn rate. The brake makes the wheels stop.
Now, imagine that we all treated that "under the hood" as a black box, and that typical people commonly confused the engine with the carburetor. Some cars would even come with holographic stickers closing the hood shut, so you couldn't open it without voiding the warranty. When someone teaches you to drive a car, they say:
"Turn that key. Now, press in this button and move this lever until it clicks four times. Turn the wheel about 60 degrees, and slowly press on the right pedal. Turn the wheel back 60 degrees, but slowly... SLOWLY! See, you almost ran into that car! Now give it a little more gas... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to fall into jargon. Press harder on that right pedal. Use the big one on the left when we get to that white line on the pavement up there."
This is how people are taught to use computers. Click this, press that, drag here, type there. Meanwhile, when the computer tells them it's running out of memory, they start deleting stuff from their hard drive to free up space, because they don't know the difference between RAM and the C: drive.
If we (meaning, those of us who know this stuff) all took a different tack, instead of teaching people procedurally how to get through a particular function or application, we might have a much easier time educating folks about not running trojans. But as long as we (again, speaking to the community that has the knowledge) keep acting like people can't and shouldn't be taught this stuff in the way that we learn EVERYTHING ELSE, we'll keep having this problem.
So I came up with an idea to fiscalize the dispersed demand for open source alternatives to proprietary software packages. (That's economist-speak for a way for folks to put their money where their mouth is.)
The idea is this: create a bounty program for particular projects. The best way would be to tack this onto an existing, respected OS organization, such as OSDN, but could be a free-standing non-profit entity. People would be able to:
- Create a bounty for production of a particular OS project
- Contribute to bounty funds for existing projects
- Place specific restrictions on their bounty contribution (i.e. must support a particular platform, needs to be distributed under a particular license, etc.)
- Suggest and vote on criteria for evaluating applications submitted for bounty consideration
- Review and vote on whether a particular package meets criteria and will be awarded the bounty
Funds would be collected from contributors at the time they decide to contribute. Lower bounds on contributions would be set by transaction costs; upper bounds don't seem necessary. Funds would be collected into a semi-liquid investment account (like a money market account) so that the money would accrue interest while the bounty is out. Costs to run the program would be collected from interest earnings on accounts, and the remainder of interest would be proportionally divided among the various projects.
Built from the ground up to be a flexible, communal framework, it would be possible to have fairly complicated reward schema. For example, if a particular submission met many of the criteria but not all (for example, had a great engine and lots of good features, but a lousy UI) the contributors to the bounty could elect to award a percentage to the project, and reserve the remainder for necessary improvements.
Since contributors have already put their money in the pot, there's less incentive to "hold back" awards if a good project comes along. If contributors merely pledge, but don't actually cough up the money until they've got the project in hand, they can say "Well, nah, this doesn't really qualify" and keep their money, while using the product.
Contributors and submitters could be any entity, including individuals, groups of people, academic institutions, or private companies.
So far I'm not seeing a drawback to this solution. People who want to see an OS port of a particular application could put up however much it's worth to them, and the projects that have the greatest demand and value to the community would get the most attention. OS developers would receive some financial reward for contributing their time and code. Small developers might decide to release a product as OS just because of the publicity they'd get from garnering the bounty, especially if they're trying to compete directly with an established proprietary product.
Long story short, I've had a good year. Great job, short commute, and dating again. I've become focused, but with great flexibility. I'm not sweating the big stuff, or the small stuff. The good stuff is in the middle.
May your holidays be commercial-free,
$$$$$exyGal
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Not that this has anything to do with technology, but whatever.
So the health insurance thing has been nagging me a bit lately, as I walk 1.5 miles to connect from the Santa Monica bus to the LA Department of Transportation DASH service, which are both unaffected by the transit strike, and also as I pay 20% more for the same products at Gelson's that I would normally buy from Von's. Whose responsibility is it to make sure that people get good health care? Why is the cost of health insurance skyrocketing? What can be done to stabilize the situation?
Well, it's obvious that health care is in several ways a market failure. It's an industry with a very distorted demand curve, because the demand for health, for *life*, is extremely inelastic. People will pay what it costs, to the extent that they have the money. This means that the price at which total revenue starts to decrease due to drop in demand is much higher than for other types of goods.
Further distorting the demand curve is the disconnect between prices and consumers created by the insurance industry. I was on a particular medication for a year and a half before I learned that the $10 I paid every other month for my bottle was less than 1/50th of the cost to my provider. I found this out entirely by accident; one day, a computer glitch left me without coverage, and I happened to go refill my perscription that day. When I got to the counter and they said "That'll be $558" I nearly had a heart attack.
If I had had to pay for that medication out of pocket, would I still have gone on it? It's hard to say. At the time I started on it, I probably could have afforded it, if I lived in a cheaper apartment and cut other expenses. Would I have stayed on it as long? I don't know. But what is certain is that the price never entered into my decision as a consumer, because I didn't have to pay for it.
So as we gain new technologies that allow us to live longer, healthier lives, and to survive or completely avoid an increasing array of diseases (my kids will be vaccinated against chicken pox... seems like they're missing out on a rite of passage), the insurance system leaves those who are covered feeling entitled to the best medical care money can buy... so long as it's not *their* money. So why is this?
We come to our second big problem... the value of life. Though civil courts every day put dollar figures on the lives of children and parents and community leaders and gang members, we all admit that life, generally speaking, is priceless. When I insure a house, two things go into calculating the premium: risk, and value. A $1 million house in the same environment as a $500k house will have a higher premium, because it will cost more to replace. A $500k house in a wildfire zone will cost more to insure than the same house in a boring urban area.
But when it comes to insuring our health, only risk can be taken into account, because there is no replacement for health. If we could value lives in the same manner as other goods, we might take into account the number of years the person can normally expect to live, the amount of education and natural talent they have, the number of people who depend on them, and so on. This would mean that my mother, a retired 60-year-old breast-cancer survivor and former smoker (38 years), with only one 29-year-old daughter, is less "valuable" than myself, a relatively healthy youngish person who will, if all goes well, have a master's degree and a heck of a career in transportation planning, along with a very young child in the next year or so. Yet it costs *more* to insure people who, in the most callous sense, are "less valuable," because the very things that make one valuable lower their risk of disease.
There is no simple resolution to the issue, as far as I can tell. We will not suddenly start "valuing" people's lives differently, nor will individuals stop demanding the best health care available at a price they can afford. But we can recognize that health care *is* a market failure, and regulate prices in new ways. Perscription drugs are a good place to start. It's true that it costs a great deal of money to develop these drugs, and there is a certain amount of risk involved. But how much of the resulting price does it take to repay that investment, with appropriate interest? Drug companies should be accountable for their pricing. Part of the FDA screening process should include an accounting of what the company's costs to develop the drug were, and a pricing system based on expected demand, production costs, initial investment, and appropriate profit should be devised. Sure, they should make money, even good money. But there should be a limit to how much they can make. The market won't limit it naturally, so this limit has to be imposed.
This model could potentially be extended to doctor's fees, lab tests, and many other areas, but in all cases would require careful analysis to ensure that the prices still yield quality coverage with low potential for fraud.
It's not enough to say that people should have access to good health care. Something has to be done to actually ensure that access. While 60,000 low-income children are wait-listed for health insurance in Florida, 700 retired MTA mechanics hold the entire transit system hostage with a strike that doesn't affect them, so that they can retain their practically free health coverage. The cheapest and potentially most rewarding people to keep healthy are left by the wayside over those who are the most expensive and offer the lowest return on investment. It's clear that something has failed, and we need to fix this soon.
I'm not an economist, but here's a some possible reasons:
My guess is #2 is the main reason why. Any thoughts? Also, how long can #2 last? Eventually, won't the cost of Indian programmers rise to near American proportions? If an Indian wanted to live an American lifestyle (DVD players, big houses, eating out every night, watching movies on the big screen, multiple computers, TV dinners, big automobiles, Starbucks, DSL, etc etc etc), wouldn't she need to make more money than $6,000 ? How long will it take for this inflation to take place? Globalization is a two-way street, right?
Never has masturbation been so newsworthy. Now it seems that chronic male masturbators are less likely to develop prostate cancer. Perhaps this is yet another reason why males masturbate excessively? Could evolution have had something to do with this? Perhaps, but this is pushing it. Maybe the non-chronic masturbators of the far-past were much more likely to die of prostate cancer. As a result, maybe those prostate cancer sufferers were less-able to support the tribe?
More labels on your meat? Some people say yes, and others say no. This seems like a no-brainer to me. Put the freaking country of origin on the packaging! That is such a baby-step, but a step in the right direction. You meat-eaters should know what you're putting in your belly. Those who say this will add to the cost of meat are living in some fantasy world
One last unrelated link I found in the blog-universe. Do you have N.A.D.D. ? Many on Slashdot do, including one of the current contestants.
For instance, I suffer from a moderately rare eye condition. I will go blind for 3+ hours if I'm exposed to bright light for more than a few minutes. It's like a goths wet dream. When it first happened I was probably 12 or so, and the whole time I sepnt trying to think what blind people saw suddenly made sense.
They don't see anything. Not black, nothing.
This particular topic in regards to what a blind person "sees" is a fascinating one. If you ask the average person on the street what blind people "see", they will probably say "nothing but blackness". Those were my thoughts as well until I realized many years ago that truly blind people do not see any "color" whatsoever. They do not see anything. The absence of sight is not the color black.
Just to be clear, there are many different variations of being "blind". I, myself, am "legally" blind without any contacts or glasses, but can see 20-20 otherwise. I see plenty of blurry colors even without my glasses. For the purposes of this discussion, "blind" refers to those people who do not receive any input whatsoever through their eyes (or optic nerves, etc).
My hypothesis is that blind people do not have a curtain of blackness preceding their paths. There is absolutely nothing at all. You might think that blind people do have a black curtain eternally draped in front of them, but they just cannot relate that experience to others, because they have no color-point-of-reference. That thinking would be wrong.
Imagine a new race of alien, called the Mucola, who have a seventh sense (I'll skip six for fun
The Mucola call the "there is no gravy around" tick "fubar", and call the "there is gravy within my reach" tick "yumyum". From "fubar" to "yumyum" are dozens or maybe hundreds of other degrees of ticks: "dork", "nerd", "geek", etc.
Nearly all the Mucola share this spectrum of tick words, with the exception of the Mucola who lost their GravyTicker in gravy-raiding battles. Those Mucola can remember what it was like to tick "fubar" or "yumyum", but now the ticking has completely stopped, and they tick nothing. Many of these Mucola quickly die, but some learn to find gravy using nothing but their senses of sight, hearing, smell, feeling, and taste.
What do you tick?
When did Slashdot begin? The FAQ says September 1997, but the earliest story I could find in the archives is from December 31st, 1997. There also don't seem to be any comments archived before 1999. Where's the really old stuff? (Note that stories posted in 1969 do not count
Where are the really old archives? Gone forever? If so, quite understandable, but regretable.
If you want to peruse some of the oldest archived stories, you can start here. As of July 10th, 2003, that link points to the oldest stuff, but the link will soon become outdated.
My Theory of Evolution - Scenario #1: "Now"
By chance, one trait is introduced into the genome of a specific individual living thing. If the trait is immediately advantageous over those of the same species who do not possess the trait, then the trait will very likely be passed along to future generations. If the trait is immediately undesirable, then the individual will be rejected by its peers and will be unable to pass along the new trait. This is called evolution.
My Theory of Evolution - Scenario #2: "Later"
By chance, one trait is introduced into the genome of a specific individual living thing. The trait is neither immediately advantageous or immediately undesirable. Over 10's of generations, the trait is very quietly passed along to a significant portion of the species (perhaps 3% or even 75%). After a significant time has passed, a significant event occurs. That event causes Scenario #1 to nearly immediately affect a significant portion of the species (those with the trait will die out or those without the trait will die out). This is called evolution.
The Random Trait Home Game!
A fun little game I sometimes play is to theorize why a specific animal or human characteristic was advantageous in the past. Maybe a specific trait allowed our ancestors to live long enough to get laid? Or maybe a specific trait somehow made our ancestors more desireable to the opposite sex? Or maybe a specific trait just randomly entered our genome without any bearing on evolution (yet!) ?
Some characteristics are easy to figure out. Why is sex fun for you? Easy! If your ancestors never had the "sex is fun" gene, then they wouldn't have had sex and you wouldn't have been born
What do you think? Any other interesting characteristics to discuss? This is fun for me
Without life, Biology itself would be impossible.
