plucky tree

google versus mob rule

2009-11-24T19:27:00.000-08:00

I can't remember the last time I used Google to find a piece of factual information and ended up with the wrong information.

The search I did was: "I promise you I will" lyrics

I was trying to find the name of the artist whose song repeats that phrase over and over. Here's what Google comes up with:

Top result: Depeche mode
8 of the top 10 results: Depeche mode
13 of the top 20 results: Depeche mode

The real answer: a one-hit wonder band called When in Rome. The poor guys had their one hit and pretty much everyone seems to think that it's actually a Depeche Mode song. Which illustrates one potential weakness with Google. If a majority of people, including reputable ones, believe something to be true and keep adding links to things they believe are true, that's what Google is going to put up at the top. I found some very sites and even some threads on last.fm where many people were adamantly insisting the song was Depeche Mode.

Only 3 of the top 20 results point to When in Rome. I was only able to completely confirm the truth by previewing the song on iTunes and it was clearly the song I was looking for.

It's interesting to think about how this might have come about. Perhaps one person put up incorrect information and others mooched off it. Then, others came along and found those sites and trusted them when they shouldn't have. Eventually, it snowballed and now it's extremely difficult to get the correct search result for this query and very difficult to correct unless enough people care enough about it to put in the effort.

frontline on derivatives

2009-10-21T16:08:00.000-07:00

Frontline has another great show on derivatives and gives a good overview of the recent economic collapse:

The Warning

You can watch the entire show online, in addition to some web-only content. In an era where all the major news organizations are either afraid to criticize a sitting administration (or even a past one) or are politically motivated rather than motivated by seeking the truth, Frontline can be a breath of fresh air.

Although the show generally has somewhat of a liberal bias, it's interesting to note they had the courage to air another great program on the war in Afghanistan and give it an accurate, yet provocative name:

Obama's War

now we're only 20 years behind

2009-10-18T22:08:00.000-07:00

Instead of being 80 years behind the rest of the civilized world, but now we are only 20 years behind:

New medical marijuana policy issued

It's a great step in the direction of partial sanity, but it's frustrating to live in a country that is perpetually so far behind the rest of the world. I suspect decriminalization will happen in another 10 years, industrial hemp farming in 20 years, and full legalization in 30 years. Meanwhile, the rest of the world will be working on new things that we will be decades behind in adopting.

if we kill enough people

2009-10-16T13:32:00.000-07:00

If we kill enough people, all the problems will be solved:

Pakistan sets its sights on Taliban sanctuary

Once most of them are dead, they won't be able to breed and make new Taliban members. Why didn't we think of this before?

ron paul on peace

2009-10-15T18:04:00.000-07:00

We're fortunate to have a few members of Congress that still deeply understand what words like "peace" and "anti-war" actually mean. Here's a thoughtful response from Ron Paul on the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama:

Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize

The Senate is especially hawkish, which is why I'm happy to see Ron Paul's son throwing his hat in the ring for 2010 (and seems to actually have a decent chance):

Rand Paul 2010

steal this idea #1: iPhone flickr slideshow app

2009-10-12T18:27:00.000-07:00

So, there are a lot of interesting iPhone apps that use Flickr, but not one that does something that I think would be pretty stunningly cool. Here's what it would do:

Using your current location, the application would cycle through full-screen photos that were taken nearby
Configuration would be extremely simple, perhaps only a preference for how long a photo would stay on screen before advancing to a new one
As you walk, drive (as a passenger!), fly on a plane with WiFi, take public transit, and so on, you'd be entertained by a continuing slideshow on photos taken near your current location at any given time. This could be especially interesting when traveling.
Tapping on the photo could give you some metadata (title of the photo and/or description) so you know what you are looking at
There could be a way to manually advance the photo (swipe, for example)
Perhaps there could be a way to say 'I love this photo' or 'I hate this photo' so future photos could be tailored based on keywords or other metadata

I can imagine being a bored kid in the back seat of a car watching a slideshow of pictures taken by people whose houses we are driving by.

I don't imagine the application would take too much work and there are already similar applications that use location data to show photos near where you are currently, but I could not find anything exactly like this.

steal this idea!

2009-10-12T15:13:00.000-07:00

About 10 years ago or so, I thought of creating a website called Steal This Idea, inspired by the classic book by Abbie Hoffman called Steal This Book. Not being a web designer and lacking time, the idea never became reality. The basic concept was very simple: the world is full of people with great ideas, but few become reality, but rarely because the person with the idea doesn't want it to be, but because they lack the resources or know-how or even time to make it real. Ironically, this is reason my site never became a reality!

A few years ago, I stumbled up stealthisidea.org, which added to the irony by stealing my idea to start something like Steal This Idea! Now that this site appears to be down, I hope someone else can pick up the reins for what I think is a good idea. Here's how it could work:

People could post their ideas for products (intangible or otherwise) that they would like to become reality
Others that have resources or time, but lack ideas, could use the site to mine for good ideas
Hopefully, in the spirit of cooperation, should the idea become reality and bring financial or other success to the implementer, it could be shared with the person that came up with the idea

Even if the ideas were 'stolen' as the site's name implies and the person that implemented it chose not to share the success, at least the idea came to reality! That's basically the crux of the idea is that it's better to have a great idea become reality and not profit from it than to have it forgotten forever.

For fun, I'll post a few random ideas that I hope someone will steal!

happy imperialism day!

2009-10-12T10:44:00.000-07:00

I've always been a big fan of giving holidays much more accurate names. For example, Columbus Day could be:

Imperialism Day
Indigenous People Extermination Day
Second (or Third) Person to "Discover" America Day
Claiming Lands That Don't Belong To You Day
Sticking Flags in the Ground Day

I'm sure you can come up with some more good ones!

war is the new peace

2009-10-09T10:11:00.000-07:00

The Nobel Peace prize continues its many decade history of being a total joke by awarding the prize to yet another person directly responsible for continuing (Iraq), escalating (Afghanistan), and initiating (Pakistan) war.

The list of past winners includes very few people that truly understood peace, like Martin Luther King, Jr, Linus Pauling, the 14th Dalai Lama, and Mother Teresa.

As others have noted, the most honorable thing to do is for Obama to refuse to accept the award. If he truly stands for peace through his actions someday, he will no doubt be given the award then.

As usual, Glenn Greenwald has a wonderfully written article on the subject:

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

And Daily Kos continues demonstrating their complete lack of integrity with this disgusting piece:

Conservatives stand with Taliban against the President

Hypocritical much?

an eagle ate my baby

2009-09-12T10:08:00.001-07:00

Good thing this hasn't been widely reported in the local news here or parents would be keeping their kids out of any parks where large, soaring birds have been spotted:

500 Years Ago, A Giant Eagle In New Zealand Was Possibly Eating Children

Panic!

most enjoyable tennis players to watch

2009-09-06T15:20:00.000-07:00

I'm not a big fan of the top few players in tennis, for a variety of reasons:

They are generally bland and emotionless, lacking real personality.
I like to see players that really look like they are having fun. Smile!
They take forever to serve the damn ball. I almost need to fast forward as they bounce the ball 27 times before hitting a serve. Get on with it already.
They don't run down every ball and play every point like it's the last. I don't want to watch lazy players, even if they are really adept at winning.

I like players that look like they have real enjoyment for the game, play their hearts out, and seem to be playing more for the love of the game and entertaining the audience than their ranking or endorsements.

Having said that, here's who I like (with their current world ranking after their name):

Andy Roddick (5): A completely transformed player that I'd love to see make it back to the top. Well-rounded, fun to watch, great foot speed, and also gets bonus points for not taking forever to serve (one of my pet peeves).
Marin Cilic (17): Seems on the verge of being among the top players in the world. Great serve, great speed for a really tall guy.
Tommy Haas (21): Great scrappy player, intense, never gives up.
Lleyton Hewitt (32): Same story here, great scrappy player, intense and determined.
John Isner (55): Recently beat Roddick at the US Open, very cool and collected, great serve, will be interesting to see where he goes.
Daniel Koellerer (62): Always fun to watch, even when he's losing badly. The on court theatrics are something that's great to see in tennis as it gets the crowd into it.

being in charge of your own country

2009-08-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

A novel concept:

Iraq May Hold Vote On U.S. Withdrawal

We know they want us to leave. When the outcome of the vote comes in, will we respect it? We say we went there to spread democracy. Well, let's see how hypocritical we look when we continue to stay because "it's in their own best interests".

redefining necessity

2009-08-27T11:24:00.000-07:00

Obama tells veterans Afghanistan is a 'war of necessity'

So, I see the following possible conclusions to draw from this, all of which are depressing:

He really does think that this war is necessary, doesn't see how it's worsening anti-American hatred and will lead to future terrorism, and doesn't understand that war is a last resort, when everything else has failed, when the lives and security of the whole country is at stake. When's the last time we had a dialog with the people we are trying to kill here?
He's saying it's a war of necessity from the standpoint of the government, whose members are funded by defense contractors and others that use government to suck away taxpayer money.
It's a war of necessity because Americans are bloodthirsty and want revenge.

What ever happened to being anti-war in the sense of never being at war unless you've failed in every possible way to avoid it?

redefining successful

2009-08-20T07:30:00.000-07:00

Another journalistic gem from CNN today:

Cash for Clunkers heading to junk yard

In the first paragraph, the supposed journalist calls "Cash for Clunkers" a "successful federal program", then proceeds to talk about what a complete fuck-up it has been from day one. So much so, that car dealers themselves don't even want to be part of a program that HELPS PEOPLE BUY MORE CARS.

In what dictionary does "successful" match up with the reality of the disaster this program has been? Here's what it's done:

Had zero effect on the environment
Had zero effect on the economy ($2 billion is a drop in the bucket in a multi-trillion dollar economy).
Put cash-strapped dealers in an even more precarious position than they were before, as they wait forever for payment

It's the same type of logic that causes people to consider Medicare successful, a program that is financially unsustainable (effectively bankrupt if it were a private company) and which more than a third of the country's doctors (the best ones) refuse to participate in. On top of that, if you're on Medicare (as everyone of retirement age is), you can't even own private insurance, something people in so-called 'socialist' countries like the UK and Germany are allowed to do.

Before throwing around the word "successful", I suggest this journalist read the rest of his own article!

a tale of two pharmacies

2009-07-30T16:24:00.000-07:00

After spending much of my life going to big chain pharmacies like Longs, CVS, RiteAid, and Walgreens, a doctor recommended a small, independently-owned pharmacy in Palo Alto called Maximart Pharmacy. It's about the size of my living room, but has been such a great experience compared to the big chains that I thought I'd jot down some of the differences. For reference, Maximart is part of a retail co-op called Good Neighbor Pharmacy, which has 2,700 member pharmacies in the country, so find out if there is one near you.

Big Chain Pharmacies

Stores are huge and less than half the products are even remotely health-related, meaning it takes a lot longer to find what you want.
Stores are usually brightly lit with crappy fluorescent lighting, giving it a hospital operating room feel.
Loud music is typically blaring, interrupted by ads for various products you can buy in the store.
Prescriptions take a maddening amount of time to fill. Even with no one in the store, I've never gotten a prescription filled in less than 20 minutes in my life. My recent suspicion is that this is intentional so that you wander around the store to buy plastic crap you don't need.
They typically have these big banners up talking about how they are "your local pharmacy", which is complete bullshit, of course.

Maximart Pharmacy (Good Neighbor Pharmacy)

Small and cozy store that's really about the size of my living room, but as far as health care products go, they have what you need. If they don't they order it for you and will even stock it regularly if you ask.
Pleasant, quiet, classical music playing as background music with no ads shouting at you.
Prescriptions filled in 5 minutes. Don't know why they can do it and no other pharmacy in the world can't, but they do, even when really busy, which they typically are.
They don't need big banners, because they really are a local pharmacy, where all the profits go to the local business owner.

I've probably ranted about it before, but a good rule of thumb is just to avoid large chain stores at all costs. The money leaves the community and the fact that they don't care about anything but profit shows in so many ways, it's hard to keep track.

So go to the Good Neighbor Pharmacy website and find the one nearest you and leave the big boys behind.

3 reasons to go HD

2009-07-30T16:13:00.000-07:00

I used to think the move to HD television and Blu-ray was rather pointless and not as big a leap as we saw when going from VHS to DVD. However, three things changed my mind:

Seeing Planet Earth on Blu-ray was the first revelation, especially since I had previously seen it on DVD. It really is just stunningly gorgeous in HD.
Watching the French Open in HD on TV. I've always liked watching tennis on TV, but hadn't watched it much in recent years. I caught the end of the French Open and it completely blew me away how much the quality difference made in enjoying watching a match.
Seeing Baraka on Blu-ray. An older movie that was shot in 65mm and then remastered for Blu-ray. In the words of Roger Ebert: "The restored 2008 Blu-ray is the finest video disc I have ever viewed or ever imagined".

2009-07-29T11:34:00.001-07:00

When I wrote this a few weeks ago:

corporations and health care

…I never expected to see something like this happen:

The centrist alternative on healthcare

Even though it'll never pass, because it wouldn't siphon money away to politically powerful companies and organizations, it's still heartening to see there are a few people in Congress that are interested in improving health care, rather than giving the appearance of "doing something" while actually making the health care system worse than it already is.

This is an excellent idea, and I'm not just saying this because I wrote about it two weeks ago. There's hard data to show that co-ops and non-profits have been doing a phenomenal job for decades at providing excellent health care, coverage, and doing what's best for patients and doctors.

bipartisanship, defined

2009-07-20T20:29:00.000-07:00

bipartisanship, n. Two political parties working together to fuck up the country, each contributing the worst ideas they have.

why i don't like roger federer

2009-07-16T12:44:00.001-07:00

I'm a huge tennis fan and while I typically like rooting for underdogs, I also appreciate someone with extraordinary talent that is virtually unbeatable. However, Roger Federer is one of the few top players in history that I've always disliked and there are a few simple reasons why:

The guy has his own logo. He wears his own logo, whether it be a baseball cap, jacket, or pants. His family all wears baseball caps with his logo on them. To top it off, when he unwraps a new tennis racquet, it's in a clear plastic bag with the RF logo on it. It's hard to be more pretentious than to have your own logo.
He does ads for Rolex, which reinforces the actually incorrect stereotype that tennis fans and players are a bunch of rich people with unlimited money to blow.
The final reason came at the end of his recent Wimbledon victory, his 15th Grand Slam victory, a new all-time record. He was interviewed on court about how he felt about breaking the record, and he said that he doesn't pay attention to the records and it's all about tennis. Would be nice if that were true, but the interviewer made him turn around to reveal the '15' embroidered in gold on his RF-logo jacket that he pulled out of his bag after winning the match.

Tennis is a great game that is not wildly popular and I think part of the problem is that people see someone like Roger Federer and it reinforces their notion that tennis is a sport for trust fund babies who had personal trainers from age 3. The truth is that the top tennis players in the world come from a huge variety of countries and nationalities, and from a variety of economic backgrounds.

corporations and health care

2009-07-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

It might seem contradictory, but there's a difference between health care motivated by capitalism and health-care run by publicly-traded for-profit corporations. It's been shown to be true that non-profit health care systems have the lowest costs, the best care, and happy, well-compensated employees. Here are two examples:

Sutter Health
Mayo Clinic

While both started as small and regional, the Mayo Clinic has attempted and succeeded in replicating their success and Sutter Health is growing year over year geographically.

Health-care run by for-profit corporations is all about maximizing profit for shareholders. Health-care run by non-profits is all about maximizing patient care for the dollar and maximizing profits to reinvest in research and better care going forward.

I was reading this article recently:

Wide support for government health plan: Poll

So, if the government wants to spend a bunch of money on health care, why not use it to encourage the development of more non-profit hospitals and other medical facilities, as well as (gasp) non-profit insurance companies?

The government has a terrible track record in health care, with Medicare and Medicaid being profound, expensive failures that deliver substandard health care that costs more than what these non-profits have been providing for decades.

In the end, the only solution is to make the entire healthcare industry a non-profit industry. It would be difficult to wave a magic wand and do it, but a helpful nudge wouldn't hurt. In areas of the country served by non-profit healthcare, a for-profit hospital simply couldn't compete. When your company has shareholder pressure to return 40% profits every year, how can you compete against a concern that not only is not under that pressure, but can use those profits to invest in new technology, better doctors, or other things to lower costs for patients.

we have a few actual journalists left

2009-06-27T21:12:00.000-07:00

Even though journalism is almost completely dead in this country, there are a few still out there, fighting the good fight. One of the best of all time has to be long-time White House correspondent Helen Thomas, briefly mentioned in this article by one of our other handful of actual journalists that still exist:

The "Neda video," torture, and the truth-revealing power of images

It's heartening to see an admittedly life-long liberal point out the obvious hypocrisy from our previous President that continues (and in some cases, like pre-emptive detention, grows) under our new President.

While most journalists are afraid to ask the hard questions or point out the obvious lies, I'm happy to see Helen still fighting the good fight after all these years.

i'll apologize

2009-06-26T14:44:00.001-07:00

Obama scoffs at Ahmadinejad's demand for apology

Since none of the Presidents in my lifetime will apologize to Iran for past and present actions, including Obama, I will:

I'm sorry my country helped overthrow a democratically elected leader in 1953 and helped reinstall a dictator, so that our oil companies could continue to control the flow of oil from your country.
I'm sorry my country thinks that's it's fine for us to have nuclear weapons to threaten other countries with, but not for you to have them to defend yourselves from us.
I'm sorry my country thinks we know what's best for your people, while not even trying to know anything about you.
I'm sorry my country helped install Saddam Hussein in Iraq and supplied arms to him in its long war with your country.
I'm sorry my country is too bull-headed to apologize for any of its current and past actions or too bull-headed to open diplomatic relations with you.
I'm sorry my country is too immature to realize that your people are just as good, decent, and hard-working as people everywhere in the world that just want to be left alone and to live their lives in peace.

ranking places to live

2009-06-21T15:54:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of surveys and reports that rank countries on various criteria, but here's one I especially like:

Global Peace Index Rankings

Instead of ranking countries by GDP or per capita income, it's not to see a thoughtful survey that ranks countries by something that actually matters. It's interesting to see the mix of countries traditionally thought of as 'rich' versus those considered 'poor' countries. In the end, happiness can be found anywhere if people are left alone to pursue their dreams and not get sucked into the cross-fire between governments waving their penises in the air.

green jobs in 2007?

2009-06-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

Green collar job creation 'outstripped traditional sectors in US'

"America's emerging clean energy economy created more than twice as many new jobs as more traditional industries in the years leading up to the economic downturn, a new study released today claimed."

But wait, this was before Obama took office and decided we needed to create green jobs. How could this be? Yet more proof that all we need to do is stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industries with tax breaks and subsidies and the green revolution will happen not only on its own, but better than it would with government interference, which will lead us to ethanol from corn, hydrogen, "clean coal", and other bullshit promoted by the companies that contribute heavily to political campaigns.

Let people that actually care save the world.

the best innovations are obvious in retrospect

2009-06-09T18:37:00.001-07:00

Some of the coolest innovations are the ones that seem so simple and obvious, yet for some reason, no one ever actually put them into practice.

With all the talk of the new features in the iPhone 3G[S], there are two that I found amazing that get mentioned in articles, but don't seem to be getting the attention they deserve. They both involve features for the camera:

Tap right on what you want the camera to focus on. Dealing with focusing in cameras has always been a huge pain, with different (and confusing!) focus modes and various attempts to be 'smart' about picking a focus point. This feature takes the obvious approach of allowing you to put your finger right on what you want the camera to focus on. Despite being a pretty good photographer, I can't tell you how many times I've been in the wrong mode or the camera has tried to outsmart me and focused on the wrong point.
Automatic macro. Why this has not been possible for cameras has always been a mystery to me. I shouldn't have to remember to put my camera in macro mode if I'm trying to focus on something extremely close-up.

Why aren't these features in every camera? They are both obvious in retrospect, but brilliant nonetheless.