Create something →

Published February 16, 2014  ·  All posts on Feb 16  ·  

If you want to really hurt you parents … the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

~ Kurt Vonnegut

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Dogs and Wolves →

Published February 14, 2014  ·  All posts on Feb 14

The thing is, the DNA of dogs and wolves are over 99 percent similar. … So while they do have physical differences, …what’s there to stop a dog from attacking the same herd it is supposed to guard? It’s breeding and training. In the human counterpart, it’s attitude, ethos and goals. Predators and protectors are totally different kinds of people, although they share many different traits. The sharing of traits, however, is the danger zone for protectors.

Or, as one friend in self-defense training joked about it to me, “The closest thing to criminals are cops. Both like to drive around in cars all day scoping out the joints, both carry guns, boss people around, and drink a lot of coffee.”

~ Wayne Muromoto from, 88. Dogs and Wolves and Budo

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It’s definitely worth thinking through the “sharing of traits” being discussed. That whole attitude/goals thing is critical for you to turn out a decent human being after a few years of your martial arts training. If you haven’t thought about your attitude/goals, you are on the good-intentions-paved road to Bad Times. If you haven’t made conscious choices about what you want to internalize, you are careening along without intentionally steering.

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Duke of York →

Published February 12, 2014  ·  All posts on Feb 12

A 150-year-old view from the pub ‘Duke of York’ on Dering street in London. The pub was first licensed in 1722, renamed the ‘Duke of York’ in 1806, and rebuilt in its present form in 1886.

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Why Doesn’t Barnes and Noble Just… →

Published February 11, 2014  ·  All posts on Feb 11  ·  

Barnes and Noble is the last man standing, right?

They tried the hardware/tablet/reader game. (Kudos for putting their money and effort where their hearts are.) But they flopped:

Barnes & Noble laid off its Nook hardware engineers, according to a source that tipped Business Insider. The engineers were let go last Thursday, according to our source. This follows Barnes & Noble dismissing the VP of Hardware, Bill Saperstein in January.

~ From Barnes & Noble Fired Its Nook Hardware Engineering Staff

Go over and search the IOS app store for “Barnes and Noble”. Nadda.

Free consulting for B&N:

  1. Develop a kick-ass (ie, hire experts) app which lets me “use” the bookstore on my IOS device. I want to browse the ENTIRE B&N catalog as if the whole thing is the world’s biggest bookstore; Every book available this instant in every physical store (you can do that today on their kiosks in the store), your second-hand “marketplace” books, special order, everything visible in one app.
  2. Do NOT make the app into Am*zon. I want JUST a bookstore. Am*zon is HORRIBLE at being just a bookstore; They jam all those ads/also-viewed, in my face, etc etc. Make a bookstore. In an app.
  3. Let me START reading in the app. (You’re big enough to go after the publishers to get the rights to start this with some books. Other publishers will follow when they realize you’re selling books for the other guys.) A few pages are free to get my feet wet. Maybe the first chapter is available for a small fee (50c? buy.), and the whole book as a digital read, (when that’s possible) for a significant discount off dead-tree book price.
  4. Meanwhile, I can click to buy the actual book.
  5. Over the rainbow: Ship me the book, with a B&N bookmark on the page where I stopped reading.
  6. Shipping the book to me? I pay shipping. (Unless of course I’m one of those B&N members, then shipping is free.)
  7. Or offer to ship-to-my-store for free. (You ship truckloads there already!). See what you just did there? PRE-sold a book, and got me into your store for some additional impulse shopping.

Nice. You just made it the best digital bookstore in the world, and made it easy for me to shift sideways to a physical book because people DO still read dead-tree books.

Extra credit:

Come up with a book recycling program so I can bring the dead-tree book back to the store — maybe I can only do this with books I bought from you. That book can then be donated to a library, resold in the marketplace second hand, or you write it off, whatever.

In exchange for me giving you the physical book, I get a wee bit of in-app credit that I can use buying those getting-started reading excerpts. Now you’ve created a cycle where I buy the book, give it back and use the “credit” to get my next hit of initial reading, to make me buy the next book . . .

You’re welcome.

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Simple in our tastes →

Published February 10, 2014  ·  All posts on Feb 10  ·  

We greeks are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness.

~ Thucydides

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Three types of human rights →

Published February 8, 2014  ·  All posts on Feb 8  ·  

My point is simply this: unless you are an extreme outlier, you do believe in all three types of human rights; Whether you prefer the term “Natural Law”, “God given rights”, or something else, you think that there are ethical norms that are not merely pragmatic but objective and true. Therefore government is not merely “something we all do together”, but potentially a destructive force that can commit evil. Finally, it is not only meaningful, but almost mandatory – if one is to say anything of interest – to take great care to distinguish between “is” and “ought” when speaking of rights.

~ “Clark” from, «https://www.popehat.com/2013/08/23/three-meanings-of-the-word-rights-atheists-are-confused/»

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Shelves →

Published February 6, 2014  ·  All posts on Feb 6

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Senate steps into the data breach controversy →

Published February 5, 2014  ·  All posts on Feb 5

The Senate Judiciary Committee spent the day looking into recent data thefts at Target and Neiman Marcus. Lawmakers know there is a big problem, but they are struggling with what role the federal government should play is creating new standards to safeguard consumer data.

~ Jim Zarroli from, Senate Steps Into The Data Breach Controversy

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Yeah. I said this before.

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Come to the edge →

Published February 4, 2014  ·  All posts on Feb 4  ·  ,

Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It’s too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and he pushed,
and they flew.

~ Christopher Logue

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Knowledge workers as a political class? →

Published February 2, 2014  ·  All posts on Feb 2

Other people are recognizing that we work in an important intersection of knowledge and responsibility, too. I came across a presentation from this year’s Chaos Communication Congress in Germany. It was a talk by Jacob Appelbaum and Julian Assange, who were introduced by Sarah Harrison. The name of the talk was SysAdmins of the World Unite.

~ Matt Simmons from, «http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/2013/12/knowledge-workers-as-a-political-class/»

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