Thank You Mr. Olbermann

May 17, 2008 – 7:35 am

At last. At long last. A voice of sanity.

Keith Olbermann decimates George W. Bush. Sadly, words like these are too late to save over 4000 American Members of the Armed Services who were not supported by our administration. Shame on you, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Neo-conservatives. You have terrorized the United States and the world for too long.

Bravo to you Mr. Olbermann.

(Note the original video as posted on current.com has gone missing. Here it is from компютриYou Tube.)

Mr. Bush: “Shut the Hell up.”

By JAHbInI | Posted in Politics! Oh My! | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

GWB, Cowardice, Bravery, a nation of sheep and Jar Jar Binks

May 11, 2008 – 9:10 am

The following was originally a comment to a thought crime article on current.com. We think it stands on it’s own. Here it is:

GWB said he was a ‘uniter,’ and he did a fabulous job of ‘uniting’ the US under the Banner of Fear. And, like sheep and Jar-Jar Binks, we rushed headlong into the slippery slope of the ‘Patriot Act’ and the ‘War on Terror.’

All this aggression on our part has ignited our enemies into using very creative guerrilla tactics based on the internet’s ability to organize and disseminate information. They will always find those guerrilla tactics: loopholes in our communication infrastructure. It will be a never ending battle as long as we think like sheep.

In the 1950′s we had an even bigger threat, and a very much larger fear: Nuclear war. It was in our lives every day. As a nation, we also had a lot of crazy ideas; anyone remember the John Birch Society or the House Committee on un-American Activities? Comic character Pogo Possum, during the height of the H-Bomb scare of the 1950′s, said “We have met the Enemy, and He is Us.” GWB says that “they hate our freedoms.” So, Mr. GWB, by uniting us in fear, we are the enemy and will also start to “hate our freedoms”.

Our National Anthem says that America is supposed to be the ‘home of the brave,’ where is the bravery? We survived the threat of nuclear war with our freedoms mostly intact, why should we divorce bravery now? We show bravado, but not true bravery. I support our troops but not their leaders. Even more importantly, I would support our nation.

Show some courage, America: bravado and aggression stemming from fear is not bravery.

By JAHbInI | Posted in Politics! Oh My! | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Atheism and Spirituality

April 23, 2008 – 10:10 am

I’m sure you would say that atheism and spirituality are mutually exclusive. That is an atheist MUST reject anything remotely spiritual.

I am of the opinion that an atheist can be acutely aware of spirituality. By rejecting God or gods in any form, an atheist must be aware that the actions of self and others and universe are ruled only be the essential laws and processes of the universe as a system: A crazy, Rube Goldberg kind of contraption much like those amazing Pitagora Suitch devices.

But what are the spiritual rules of these devices, whether or not these rules created or evolved. Spirituality at it’s most basic form is all about the basis for our actions. That is, what creates and shapes the actions and interactions of us as humans as well as everything else: from Ken Wilber‘s frisky dirt to the interactions of people, of governments and of corporations.

If an atheist enters into a contract, would you expect that the atheist would fail to honor that contract? Actually, the atheist would honor that contract just as often as a Pope or Rabbi or Minister. Remember, all of these have honored or dishonored contracts at one time or another. It has nothing to do with religion, but specifically if the contract works for the parties involved.

The atheist who honors a contract, can appreciate the spirit and essence of the contract just as well as you or I or anyone else. The atheist’s understanding of that spirit and essence depends on that person’s personality, intelligence and many other factors. The point here is that ‘spirit’ is not rejected by the atheist, only ‘God.’ In fact, the atheist needs to be very aware of that separation, which makes a true and thoughtful atheist a spiritually aware person. I’m not talking of a newbie atheist, who at 17, decides that everything he has learned must be rejected, and hastily declares “I am an atheist.” It may take years for that person to truly and finally conclude that there is no God.

It takes a great deal of contemplation to tease the essentials of the rules of proper action away from any religious dogma. After all, if we are only doing something or thinking something to avoid punishment from an angry god, it speaks very poorly of ourselves as sentient, caring, responsible people. But we can be sentient and caring and responsible because we can understand the positive value of being that way: it has nothing to do with God’s Wrath, and everything to do with how we set our internal compass.

I would like to propose that we separate the spiritual aspect of our internal compass from any reference to God’s Word that comes from a book (not that I dislike books, I just think they are written by people, not God). But this post is not about the Bible, it is about the fundamental difference between a belief in God from the ability to embrace a natural and nourishing spirituality.

I’ll leave this post with several open questions:

  • what concepts form a useful basis for our actions?
  • Are these concepts universal?
  • Should they also work for governments and corporations?
  • How different are these rules from the basic statements of the world’s religions?
  • If these concepts are universal, is there a basis for using them to celebrate the sheer goodness of them and how we implement them in life?

By JAHbInI | Posted in Spiritual | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Possible Polyamory? Multiple Monogamy?

April 5, 2008 – 8:09 pm

I revel in possibilities. Practical alternatives to our stalemate with culture, economics, and society. We have been told over and over that the USA is a ‘free country.’ But in what way? there is absolutely nothing free except air and water, and we are paying big-time for Coke and Pepsi to put baby laxative in our bottled water. Yes, look for magnesium sulfate, folks — It’s baby laxative — and you pay for it?

And so with the most important thing of all,our very most personal relationships. So personal that we hesitate to make a connection lest it damage ourselves, or worse, our partner. Damn you if your love turns sour, but double damn me if I inadvertently hurt you through my love for you.Jenny Block, author of <em>Open : Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage</em>

And so I am delighted to bring two incredible viewpoints from ladies that are trying to explore new territory and to bring light to what used to be forbidden topics.

The first is from Jenny Block who has given us the insights into an open marriage: a valid agreement for multiple lovers in a committed relationship.

The second is from Suzanne Portnoy who really has had it with monogamy. She is open about liking sex, liking men, and not bashful at all when it comes to saying: “Not Exclusive!” Some would call her a prostitute, but for two things: she does it for free, because she wants to. And with whom she wants to. Both are things that separate her from mere prostitution: she exhibits, neither.

She has authored two books that you should know about: The Not So Invisible Woman, and the erotic memoir: The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker.

Can you handle a woman like that? I wonder if many men could, a strong woman should be a national treasure.

By JAHbInI | Posted in relationships, Sex | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

The Democrat Problem and an American Solution

March 28, 2008 – 3:43 pm

Simply stated, the Democratic Party has got too many choices. Two great candidates: Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. One has charisma and is a great orator, the other is a master executive and problem solver.

Both have platforms and viewpoints that are, essentially compatible. Trouble is, the supporters of one are rabid in their dedication to their favorite candidate. And worse, would NOT vote for the other! and would easily be more at ease with Republican Senator John McCain as president!

Like me, I would find it hard to vote for Senator Obama over John McCain. I think Barack is naive and means well but really does lack experience. And I like John, he undoubtedly has the experience, and then some. I really think he is a straight talker: enough so that you can find articles like:

Related articles

OK, here is the solution: The Democrats can have it for free:
have Hillary and Barack publically join up in a run for the white house with the agreement that each will be president for four years. The next election, the other candidate would run on the top of the ticket. In this fashion, the pair could easily hold the white house for 12 to 16 years. Which candidate will be president first should be decided by an arbitrary and hopefully fair decision: like a public coin toss. Something that we can all say is NOT the result of ‘slick-talk’ or campaign financing or lobbies or any political hot-topic.

OK, there is my solution: Obama, you say that you want to have a change in the system? Well there it is — a change to get things going smoothly forward. Hillary, you say that you want to work for the American Public? All of us? Well, roll up your sleeves.

I do not want a politician in the white house. I want a Statesman. Step up.

By JAHbInI | Posted in Politics! Oh My! | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

A Search Engine Optimization Strategy

March 16, 2008 – 6:19 pm

The mantra of the SEO community is: Content and Backlinks. The MetaGoogle MegaCorporation calculates a site’s worth with some high-falutin’ hueristic that measures the depth of the Moon’s Shadow, the Man’s Piaba and maybe the number of ‘worthy’ links into your site. The worthiness is also a magic quantity that nobody is really sure about.

For me, Jim Hinds, my main interest is romance and relationships: My web pages are Romance Capitol and my therapy page Celarien

I need to get visitors to my site. That is your opportunity also: getting visitors to your site!

So we need a strategy that will put eyeballs on your site and maybe make google happy.

Now, what if there was a secret society that put a whole bunch of web site owners together that:

  1. looked at each other’s site
  2. reviewed each other’s site
  3. encouraged the site owners to post those reviews with proper backlinks on their own site
  4. add those reviews on a slow and daily basis so as not to confuse the Search Engine People
  5. made suggestions to each other’s site
  6. and invited other site owner’s to do the same

Bingo! What do you have? A club that encourages cross-linking. Fair, you only link to those you want to, and Balanced, when you want to. In addition, you have lots of the most web-sophisticated people looking at your site. That is linkreferral.com! An altogether good thing. I estimate that my FREE usage of that service has gotten me over 100 hits in the first week of use alone.

But what is the down side? Well, the way that the Link Referral people encourage site owners to join is to return a fraction of the action. And so it looks a bit like a multi-level marketing program. That’s not entirely bad, especially when you consider that you are not really joining to get rich, just to get more real eyeballs on your site.

Another organization is quite a bit more up ‘in your face’ about the money making aspect. That is You WE (yuwie.com). Here is the funny part: They are actually more fair and honest than the social web services that do NOT give any money back to their users. Does your daughter’s social web site give her any money? If she was on Yuwie, she might get even a little back.

But money is NOT the big advantage of the Yuwie community. The big secret is that these users are more motivated to look at your yuwie site, simply because they think it will gain them some money. It may, but the effect is that your Yuwie site can point too your REAL site with full RSS links, blog postings and such. Yuwie users will be looking at your content and that can’t be bad.

Check out this video introduction to Yuwie.

It is like a one-two punch to get visitors to your web site: The linkreferral concept joined with the Yuwie concept.

Act now. You can use your on-computer time more fun and more intelligently as well as get more visitors to your site. And that’s pretty much a good thing.

By JAHbInI | Posted in SEO, Technical | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Yup, I’m a “My Name is Earl” fan.

November 22, 2007 – 11:00 pm

Karma does indeed work in mysterious ways. Even though “The Peoples Choice” awards are history, and ‘Earl’ got passed over, I rejoice that Earl got out of the Slammer.

And got run over again…

We will just have to wait for next season and find out if the show is cancelled … Now that would just delight my evil twin brother over at kegare.org!!!

By JAHbInI | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Blog Footer Plugin for Word Press

November 14, 2007 – 3:02 pm

We like WordPress. A lot. It is written in the cleanest code, very well structured, efficient, and does a socially useful function.

That’s high praise for a piece of computer software. A socially useful function. Now for my socially not-so-useful reasons, I wanted to run all of my various blogs out of a single directory. That way, I only need to upgrade one directory when a new revision of wordpress comes along.

Easy? Well, mostly. We still have a couple of got-ya! kind of problems every now and then. Like how to select the proper database for the proper blog: that’s simple. Just use a switch statement in the wp-config.php file that selects the proper database from a switch on the HTTP_HOST environment variable.

One small problem, is that one of the blogs needs special code appended in the footer. This html code isn’t shared with the other blogs. Some examples of that kind of code would be ring-specific, affiliate code, hit-tracking code, you know all that kind of stuff.

So I found a plugin entitled ‘WP-GenericFooter” which did 110% of the dirty work. It’s written by David Goldstein. The only thing I needed that Dave didn’t put in the original was that he designed the plugin to put the footer at the end of each posting. I needed it as paart of the real footer at the bottom of the blog page.

It was a no-brainer to change the code to put the text at the bottom rather than at the end of each post. That is due to the great design of WordPress and the elegant coding of Mr. Goldstein (send him flowers, send him beer, I just want your web-hits).

If you want a wordpress plug-in that puts any html at the bottom footer of your blog here it is:blog footer plugin.

Let me know if it is useful to you!

By JAHbInI | Posted in plugins | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Story Telling, Psychological Therapy, Learning Computer Science and Video Screenplay all in one!

November 8, 2007 – 1:34 pm

Story Telling Alice is an interesting approach to education, with some potential uses for teen-therapy.

Youth are totally OK with button pushing, and can juggle the complex nature of computer interaction: we see evidence of that with the popularity of cell-phone texting and video games, etc.

Now while ‘Alice’ is a vehicle for teaching some programming skills, the ‘Story Telling’ variant has more appeal as an avenue for teens to vent and disclose themselves. A big plus is that while they are actually developing and putting the story into the machine, they are NOT interacting with an adult. For a teen, those teen-adult interactions have not gone well for them: that’s a big reason they are alienated. Using the machine can allow a more open communication pathway for them. (for historical resources in that direction see weizenbaum’s experiences with his rogerian style “eliza“)

Here is the storytelling version of ‘Alice‘ (it has been developed by Carnegie-Mellon U with technologies adapted from the ‘Sims’ games)

By JAHbInI | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Things that Everybody Knows but Google.

September 29, 2007 – 7:18 am

If I ask the question: “How much percentage of fat is in a fat cell?” I may get several answers: none of which actually address my exact question. Since fat cells normally grow and shrink to hold more, or less fat, the answer is pretty much up in the air. You could say, there is no set percentage. Or the percentage ranges from 1% to 99.9%. or the answer is unknown.

None of these answers, except possibly the one with explicit percentages, could have enough match with any web-accessible document to show up on Google. And there would be an enormous number of results: enough so that the real answer would be totally buried.

A human, armed with the simple knowledge that fat cells shrink and grow, would simply say: “It’s like saying ‘how much air is in a balloon,’” and reply with an analogy that would let me know within seconds of the real answer.

If I ask Google, or any simple web-indexing service, I’ll not get the human’s insight into the true nature of reality. However, let us suppose, that a human answered: A fat cell is 30% fat, and the rest is mostly water. We would know that answer is meaningless and misleading. This would be true of any answer that tried to pin down the real fat content of a cell. Any one without an ulterior motive would answer simply and with the most direct answer possible.

There are any number of questions that Boggle can not answer, simply because it is a basically an indexing scheme with a heuristically organized ratings. Adding artificial intelligence, like http://ask.com/ helps a little, but the state of the art of artificial intelligence has a long, long way to go. If you ask Noam Chomsky, it may never happen.

Even the simplest of questions can cause a stumble, even true and false questions: “is there 50% fat in a fat cell?.” Or even more complicated questions: “How can I reduce the fat quantity of my fat cells to less than 20%?”

Sometimes, a human is the best information provider. Google is great, but it does have it’s limits.

By JAHbInI | Posted in Technical | Tagged , , | Comments (0)