A Two week vacation

Making a list, checking it twice, ... So far this has been a highly fulfilling and satisfying hiatus. Recently, went to spy museum, american indian museum, smithsonian museum, and holocaust museum. Also, looking to do the Baltimore Zoo, National Aquarium (with 4d theatre), and the inner harbor today.

I think also visiting Dupont Circle, the national zoo, the power plant, conowingo dam, and the new york zoo might be fun.

As for movies, Ive seen Star Trek 3 times, wolverine (xmen), Up, Wargames 2, and Terminator. This combined with an active instant Netflix account (and Hulu for rewatching arrested development) has provided a whirlwind of new cinema to parse.

Flea market and Family Reunion may be on the plate. Probably time to find some time to meditate.

Clearly

If only using the word 'clearly' was a substitute for science, how easy life would be.

Tim Minchin

I discovered Tim Minchin on YouTube and think his music is interesting.

Sell All the Gold in Fort Knox?

$129,711,120,000 is the value of all the gold in Fort Knox. 129 Billion $. The Bailout could have bought 6.5x all the gold in Fort Knox.

810 Billion $ Quote

"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." - Toq.

Confidence

I keep falling back into Macro News instead of focusing on the technology I know. Today is no different.

When a society only has "confidence" as a means to stabilize its financial markets, its an indicator of bad things to come. "Competence" is what we need. Not all investments cause losses. A competent financial Guru should easily be able to give me a guarantee of positive return. Any financial professional who has lost a single client money should be barred from working in the financial services industry ever again.

Correct Response to privacy

From:

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2006/05/70886

"The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

Some clever answers: "If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me." "Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition." "Because you might do something wrong with my information." My problem with quips like these -- as right as they are -- is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.

Two proverbs say it best: Quis custodiet custodes ipsos? ("Who watches the watchers?") and "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." "

Universal Truths

Scavenged from: boreme.com

Universal truths

1) Triangular sandwiches taste better than square ones.
2) At the end of every party there is always a girl crying.
3) One of the most awkward things that can happen in a pub is when your pint-to-toilet cycle gets synchronised with a complete stranger.
4) You've never quite sure whether it's ok to eat green crisps.
5) Everyone who grew up in the 80's has entered the digits 55378008 into a calculator.
6) Reading when you're drunk is horrible.
7) Sharpening a pencil with a knife makes you feel really manly.
8) You're never quite sure whether it's against the law or not to have a fire in your back garden.
10) Nobody ever dares make cup-a-soup in a bowl.
11) You never know where to look when eating a banana.
12) Its impossible to describe the smell of a wet cat.
13) Prodding a fire with a stick makes you feel manly.
14) Rummaging in an overgrown garden will always turn up a bouncy ball.
15) You always feel a bit scared when stroking horses.
16) Everyone always remembers the day a dog ran into your school.
17) The most embarrassing thing you can do as schoolchild is to call your teacher mum or dad.
18) The smaller the monkey the more it looks like it would kill you at the
first given opportunity.
19) Some days you see lots of people on crutches.
20) Every bloke has at some stage while taking a pee flushed half way through and then raced against the flush.
21) Old women with mobile phones look wrong!
22) Its impossible to look cool whilst picking up a Frisbee.
23) Driving through a tunnel makes you feel excited.
24) You never ever run out of salt.
25) Old ladies can eat more than you think.
26) You can't respect a man who carries a dog.
27) There's no panic like the panic you momentarily feel when you've got your hand or head stuck in something.
28) No one knows the origins of their metal coat hangers.
29) Despite constant warning, you have never met anybody who has had their arm broken by a swan.
30) The most painful household incident is wearing socks and stepping on an upturned plug.
31) People who don't drive slam car doors too hard
32) You've turned into your dad the day you put aside a thin piece of wood
specifically to stir paint with.
33) Everyone had an uncle who tried to steal their nose.
34) Bricks are horrible to carry.
35) In every plate of chips there is a bad chip.

Copyright Stuff

The case of Atlantic V Anderson is a case where the Recording Industry charged a woman with copyright infringement and ended up paying $107,951 and admitting fault.

On copyright, I never advocate breaching copyright. I do feel that as a society we should be focusing on creating new works and not living off the proceeds of past works. Performers should make money by performing. Software writers should make money with enhancements to their software. No one should be be stifled because of worrying about infringing someone else's property rights.

There is no reason why this issue ever needed to reach the scale that it has. Penalizing litigious companies suing their own customers is an appropriate response to this activity.

Solar Cell Developments

link
Comment with correct spelling:
There is a lot of research going on into improving not only the output of solar but into lowering the cost of manufacturing them. Nanotechnologies have in lab tests have shown certain avenues of current research may have the ability to increase performance of basically existing tech by as much as 25%, sure they are a ways to go before any kind of mass production can be done with this research but it's there. Increasing acceptance by the population as to the usefulness of the equipment will of course generate more investor dollars into this research, and frankly I'd much rather see this than more research into increasing payload output of bombs. Some areas still have much they could do to encourage the adoption of solar too. being able to sell energy to the grid rather than just offset the cost of what you bought for instance in California alone would be a boon to the industry.