Josh McNeill

Category: Uncategorized (Page 17 of 19)

Terrorists, bullies, and those other elections.

October 25, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Sarah Palin did and interview with Brian Williams recently, with McCain by her side of course, and was asked an interesting question:

Now obviously she doesn’t condone abortion clinic bombers but it’s a little ridiculous that she couldn’t call them terrorists. Why couldn’t she say the word? Is she associated with an abortion clinic bomber? Is she afraid of offending the abortion clinic bomber crowd? Is she just an idiot? The answer is probably the last suggestion there but that whole little conversation is interesting regardless.

Another interesting campaign story is the one about a girl who was “attacked by a big black man who carved the letter ‘B’ into her cheek”. This didn’t actually happen but guess who reported it anyway?

This was a McCain campaign volunteer who has obviously gone off the deep end either in her support for McCain or her hatred of black people. Seriously, she didn’t have to say that this imaginary attacker was a black guy but she did. That could have had some serious implications for the racial divide in that city and it would have been based on a lie. I kind of hope that she cut that deep enough into her face that she’ll be stuck with a ‘B’ on her cheek for the rest of her life. It would be like a cooler real life version of the Scarlett Letter where you don’t have to feel sympathy for the person branded.

Lastly, I got my sample ballot yesterday and I would like to point out to everyone that we are voting for more than just the president on November 4th. Just to make things easy on anyone who’s lazy but might have some inclination towards voting, here are some quick links to find out about these people.

For the US Senate:

Personally, I’m going for Lautenberg. Zimmer has some bad ideas on how prisons should be run like taking away all luxuries from the prisoners to save money. That sounds fine until you realize how much more dangerous a prison becomes when you don’t have some form of entertainment to keep those guys and gals docile. I know this because my dad runs a prison. He also seems somewhat along the lines of a neo-conservative. Lautenberg is a little more liberal than I like but he’s better than Zimmer, to me, by far. And Jeff Boss is just some crazy truther who thinks people in Mexico have tried to kill him to shut him up.

For the House of Representatives:

Personally, I’m going Kurkowski. LoBiondo is the incumbent and the last time I looked at his record he was pretty much a mirror image of Bush. He’s a partisan hack. The only thing I know of that he’s stood his own ground on is the bail out bill which he voted against but it’s questionable whether that was the best way to vote or not. In this case I’m kind of voting against LoBiondo instead of for Kurkowski. Kurkowski was a school teacher and is a small business owner and doesn’t have much to say but at least he’s not a Bush clone. The other three couldn’t even be bothered to make a proper web site that says anything about their ideas so I can’t be bothered to vote for them.

For Cape May County Sheriff:

There isn’t much info on these two other than their resumes and I like Hallett’s more. He’s been in a secret service agent, a CIA agent, and a police officer. He also sounds level headed. Schaffer has just been a long time Ocean City cop. I trust the guy with the diverse background over the guy who’s biggest problem for the last 25 years has been rounding up underage drinkers. Also, I was told that Schaffer, while walking the streets campaigning, found a little girl and told her to bring his flyer up to someone’s door instead of doing it himself. Apparently this little girl didn’t have a clue what she was doing or who the guy was. That just sounds weird.

For Lower Township Mayor:

  • Harvey roach
  • Glenn Douglass
  • Michael Beck

There’s hardly any info on these three. I’m leaning towards Beck because of some vague idea of his positions but I’m still unsure about this one. Check them out for yourself.

That’s the low-down though. If you’re voting on the 4th for president and don’t want to leave those other parts blank or just check off who you want based on party then it might be worth looking into these guys. It doesn’t take very long, honest.

Magnets on the brain.

October 24, 2008 / / 0 Comments

The FDA just gave the go ahead for doctors to use magnets to tickle your brain cells when you’re depressed. Apparently someone out there has been messing with something they call transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). The idea is to take magnets and use them to stimulate parts of the brain responsible for things like mood regulation. There have been studies that showed that this was effective for a lot of people suffering from clinical depression and, of course, there are no side effects. The downside to these studies is that the placebo groups didn’t get a very convincing dose of fake therapy. Obviously, if you’re comparing two groups and neither of them can be used a control then your results aren’t going to be all that acceptable. It’s interesting anyway. It makes you wonder how long it will be until we no longer have to be sad, ever. It also makes you wonder if that’s really a good thing. Check it out:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/dn14998-magnetic-brain-therapy-gets-us-green-light.html

Do you think Mickey Mouse is going to vote?

October 22, 2008 / / 0 Comments

There has been a lot of talk about ACORN. This is an nationwide organization that aims to register low income people and minorities to vote. Recently it’s been brought to the attention of the national media that in some areas ACORN has turned in a lot of fake registrations. You can hear daily from the Republicans about how this is voter fraud and evidence that Obama is trying to steal the election. It’s not.

First of all, the most important point, Obama has not used ACORN at all during the general election.

Now that that’s out of the way, there are very good reasons why this has become such an issue. ACORN was paying people by how many registrations they turned in. The natural reaction for some would be to write up a bunch of fake registrations and get a lot of money for no work. These people have, for the most part, been fired. The registrations they turned in were flagged by ACORN as being fake. In some states every registration collected must be turned in to the election board so that the board can be in charge of deciding if something is fake or not. ACORN followed this rule and sent the bad registrations with the good and flagged each to be clear. That’s it. That’s the whole situation. Now, somehow, ACORN is destroying democracy and they’re becoming a focal point of the election. Remember those issue things? Yeah, all that stuff about policy and the real problems our country is facing? The GOP would apparently like you to ignore those things and focus on manufactured crap like this ACORN “issue”.

Also, for the record, this isn’t voter fraud. Voter fraud would be someone actually showing up and voting illegally. Brave New Films has put out a video that gives a good explanation for all this. They get into stuff about how Republicans want voter turn out to be low, and I’m sure there are some that do, but that may be the unfair part of this video. Anyway, watch.

The whole “Joe the Plumber” conversation.

October 18, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Honestly, I’m getting tired of hearing only three words from this five minute long conversation. It seems everywhere I turn there’s someone repeating the phrase “spread the wealth” as if those were the only words Obama said to Joe Wurzelbacher from Ohio. This is usually followed by claims that Obama is a socialist, a communist, and wants to punish successful people. This even sometimes flows into claims that Obama is a terrorist, un-American, and isn’t even a natural-born US citizen.

The level of xenophobia lately is crazy. In the news I’ve seen anything from a man cackling as he shows a camera his stuffed monkey with an Obama hat that he calls “Little Hussein” to someone’s Halloween decorations that include a lynched ghost with “Obama” written on it as well as “Husain” (yes, it was spelled wrong). There is such a huge amount of disinformation, racism, fear, and just plain hate lately that I wouldn’t even know where to begin to start correcting some of it so I guess I’ll just correct one thing.

Here is the entire “Joe the Plumber” conversation.

And before you get swept away in all the non-sense propaganda out there, take at least one look at FactCheck.org. Seriously, don’t be stupid.

Singing about bombs.

October 14, 2008 / / 1 Comment

I know there aren’t many people who like opera or even know anything about it but I like it a lot. That being said, I feel the need to expose people to tidbits here and there that might break the stereotype of opera being some boring, stuffy, old crap with funny singing.

This, the Batter My Heart aria, is probably the most moving part of John Adams’ opera Doctor Atomic. This premiered in 2005. That’s right, people still write new operas. You might notice, if you bother to listen, that this sounds nothing like Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven. Contrary to popular belief, classical music comes in many flavors and the well known flavors tend to be very old and out of use.

Adams is a post-minimalist composer. Essentially that means rhythm is very important to his sound as well as lingering on a chord for long periods of time. For anyone who’s into jazz, it’s a similar idea to modal jazz. For anyone who’s into rock, Sigur Ros is a good example of something in the same vein. The “post” part means he’s allowed to travel out of the boundaries of the rules that minimalism created that I’ve mentioned already.

Anyway, this aria is pretty high on energy which is not what one would normally think of when they hear the word “opera”. The words are taken from a poem by John Donne. What’s happening is Oppenheimer is combating the moral issues created in himself while creating the atomic bomb. Take a listen:

Just for fun, I think I’ll post one of John Adams’ early works for piano. This one I just like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3abjsYUkk4 (embedding was disabled for this one)

Collective consciousness anyone?

October 7, 2008 / / 0 Comments

I was pleasantly surprised by a video game today. I usually follow PC gaming so I know what’s coming out and all but the game that caught my attention tonight was a Playstation 3 title called Little Big Planet. The developers bring a novel idea that, to me, speaks to the perpetually greater amount of connectivity that technology is bringing to our world.

First of all, the game looks fun. It’s a side scrolling platform game. The catch is that it’s a pseudo-sandbox setup. You make your own levels and play other people’s levels. Essentially you can make whatever you want. Seriously, it’s extremely open ended to the point where one person has built a working calculator in the beta version of the game. The things you build can also be shared online with other players. You get ratings, friends, comments, etc. They seem to have tied social networking into their video game.

If this all works out, I think this will be a big step towards showing the real power of video games. There are so many positives here. They give people an outlet for creativity and creative thinking instead of being confined to a linear path. They give people the opportunity to spread that expression of themselves around the world instantly and even get noticed if they’re aspiring game producers. They give people a chance to learn through the game as essentially anything is possible (see calculator). I feel like I’m forgetting a bunch of things that I was thinking about earlier but you get the picture. Extrapolate.

Anyway, seeing is believing. Here it is:

This is why I’m smarter than you.

October 5, 2008 / / 0 Comments

I don’t think that I could say that with a straight face in real life. I know I’m not stupid, but I’ll often argue against the things I think I know if I can’t find someone to do it for me. I’m pretty much in a constant state of questioning whether I’m right or not on any number of points so I couldn’t possibly be arrogant enough to tell anyone that I’m smarter than them…. unless someone out there thinks that’s a completely inaccurate portrait of me.

Anyway, I found this article today:

http://www.physorg.com/news142185056.html

Supporting what many of us who are not musically talented have often felt, new research reveals that trained musicians really do think differently than the rest of us. Vanderbilt University psychologists have found that professionally trained musicians more effectively use a creative technique called divergent thinking, and also use both the left and the right sides of their frontal cortex more heavily than the average person.

I think this study is pretty much a load of crap personally. First of all, I know you don’t need millions of people to make a psychological study statistically significant but forty people? Also, the musicians had higher IQ as a whole? Doesn’t that mean that they picked people who had higher IQs for the musicians side of the experiment? These people failed the chicken vs the egg test. And the last thing I’ll point out, although not the last thing that could be pointed out, is that I’ve met a hell of a lot of really stupid musicians. Maybe classical musicians from this one particular school tend to be smart, but that’s certainly not the whole from my experience.

<Insert closing paragraph that creatively wraps things up here.>

Did you notice the financial world crumbling yesterday?

September 30, 2008 / / 0 Comments

I wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t. It’s very easy and common to have a disconnect from the happenings in the world anymore. So even when we may have been witnessing the biggest financial catastrophe (or the greatest financial bet) in the last one hundred years most of you probably didn’t bat an eyelash. I think that’s a problem.

Yesterday the House of Representatives voted down the financial bail out bill. Some 40% of Democrats voted against the bill as well as the majority of Republicans. The bill failed by twelve votes and the market reacted with the biggest single day point drop, for the DOW, in history. That’s not in the last decade or two, that’s ever. This isn’t the biggest problem though, the biggest problem is that credit may just completely freeze up. Anyone who needs a loan for anything (a house, a car, payroll, to order inventory) may be out of luck. Our credit based economy could very soon come to a halt. Some people have even said that your ATM or credit card may not work anymore. That one is a bit of a stretch but I think it’s worth it to check the performance of your bank’s stock. ING has dropped from $48 to $20 in the last six months so I’ve seriously considered moving my money.

There is a really good side to this. The bet that a lot of politicians in the House are betting on is that doing nothing is doing the most to fix this problem. After all, why should we prop up failing businesses? Maybe we should let those businesses fail, even if it hits us hard in a lot of ways, so that better businesses can take their place. This may even be the best way to keep our market free while giving powerful firms a very good reason not to partake in the shady trading practices that helped get us here in the first place. The bill was going to include oversight on this kind of thing but wouldn’t it be nice if we instead told the market that if they screw up it’s completely on their shoulders? It’s like teaching a kid responsibility. You don’t help them learn this valuable skill by fixing all the problems they create for themselves.

Of course, there are very good reasons for propping these businesses up like I have mentioned already. In the end this all seems like a wild guess at which choice will help the most. No one is crunching numbers to find out and it wouldn’t really be helpful as economics is as much a social phenomenon as it is a mathematical phenomenon. Personally, I lean to the “let the crap fall out” side but I’m regularly going back and forth on the issue. The only thing I know for sure is that you should all be paying attention. As much as we all like to think we live in a vacuum, we really don’t. We elect the people who decide these things and their decisions could decide whether we enter another Great Depression or not. If we do, it’s not the politicians we should blame, it’s the people. We should blame the people who have become lazy and bought into the idea that nothing we do makes a difference. We should blame the people that take the success of their nation for granted and choose to forgo the voting rights that others in the past were willing to die for, whether they were soldiers or just minorities that wanted a voice. In short, inform yourself.

Another new super computer.

September 27, 2008 / / 0 Comments

I found this today in my RSS reader:

http://eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210602671

Most of the article is probably gibberish to anyone who’s reading this but there are two important points. One is the idea of separating applications from the server. The other is the processing power of this system compared to the processing power of the human brain.

If I understand what they’re saying correctly, they plan on allowing applications, even while they’re running, to be re-allocated to different parts of the network in real time. This is a pretty significant leap in stability. To simplify, if a computer that is currently running the program you’re using crashes then the program would automatically be run by a separate computer without interruption. You would essentially never see this system crash unless the entire system went down simultaneously. This can probably tie into the cloud computing idea that I posted about before. Cloud computing could use this technology and so be much more stable than computers, as we know them today, are. You could even tie this into the economy. Network and system outages can be a big drain on business. I know every time the computer system is down where I work we lose customers simply because we can’t solve each problem quick enough by hand.

The other idea is probably a bit more exciting to those who aren’t interested in technology. This system would be able to perform 1000 petaflops which would be the first computer system, that I’m aware of, that beats out the processing power of the human brain. In a nutshell this means we’re one step closer to being able to create artificial intelligence that matches human intelligence. Obviously the system would have to be shrunk down for widespread practical applications and we would still have to figure out how to program the AI but it’s a definite step forward. Maybe in the next couple decades we’ll have to seriously start answering ethical questions about artificial intelligence.

I’m regularly amazed at how much the human race is accomplishing. It’s fun to watch the world change on a daily basis and gives a good argument for optimism (or pessimism too if you’re afraid of change I guess).

Which side should he pander to?

September 23, 2008 / / 0 Comments

It appears John McCain really can’t decide whether he wants to pander to hardcore conservatives or moderates and liberals. He has spent the last week blasting the system that allowed the market to become deregulated to the point that we have financial meltdown and now he’s going on television saying that deregulations have helped grow the economy. This really is like the Twilight Zone. You can’t have it both ways. Either regulations were a bad thing or they were a good thing. This is just like when he went on TV and said that he’s an ardent supporter of George Bush and then went around campaigning as if he’s the polar opposite and will bring tons of reform to Washington. I really hope this sort of newspeak isn’t convincing anyone.

The first presidential debate is Friday at 8pm on just about every channel. Watch it.

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