Friday, February 12, 2010

Do people have a right to be not offended?

Do people have a right to be not offended?

I say "of course not!!!"

You take offense, it is not given!

I'm offended by bad driving, uncoordinated clothing, stupid people, people who chew with their mouths open, people who walk with their mouth open, people who take homeopathic medicine etc.. and that is MY PROBLEM!! not theirs.

Offense is your reaction to something, and does not necessarily reflect the intention of the act.

Well this is what is on trial in the Netherlands. Geert Wilders is going on trial for offending Muslims by stating that he believes that Islam is bad. He has no problem with Muslims, but thinks that the ideals of Islam is a danger to our culture. He makes a good point. I would go further by grouping Judaism and Christianity in with it.. but I may offend :-\

There is a new trend to treat groups (religions and businesses) like they are people. But are they? If I get together with friends, to we as a group get extra rights?

A decent rant about this is given by Pat Condell in youTube



Geert's website is wildersontrial.com. A good article by Douglas Murray is found here.

what do you think?

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Back from vacation and the word is being taken over

What are you going to do when we are run by the soulless corporation? These ideas are for science fiction, but with the appearance of the leaked ACTA documents, we see how seriously changes are being pushed through far reaching international treaties; a good summary has been posted by Michael Geist in his ACTA Guide. Here is the agenda for round 7 which started yesterday here in Mexico.

#displayname# Well the best thing is to keep communication open and flowing. That is where Tor comes in. It is a way to open proxy servers for use by anonymous people. A good overview was given and wildbee.org.

Get Tor

To become a volunteer, download this software.

To use Tor to protect your own privacy, download this software


The freedom of information and the public domain wars has taken on a new face with the proclamation of "The Public Domain Manifesto". To read about it you can go to their site and sign to show your support (done by Communia), or

Then with your information stream unhindered, you can fabricate your own tech. As I've mentioned before about the fab labs and home 3D printers, wired had a great article on the next revolution being 3D printers writing with atoms; Wired, Atoms are the new bits (very similar to the Diamond age by Neil Stevenson.)

#displayname#

And finally for today, a great journal, the Journal of Serendipitous andUnexpected Results. I love the idea of a journal of discoveries that happened when we weren't looking for them.

Thursday, February 04, 2010

White roofs do help

It seems so obvious that I'm surprised that a law has not been passed forcing all flat roof buildings to be painted white. But aside from that, I con't understand why people don't paint their house's roof white just to take down the heat in the summer. Here is CICESE the roofs were all white, but this last year they repainted all of them red.. which makes no sense and was a very uninformed move.

Well, there is not good data from simulations stating the obvious.. white roofs are a good idea; Computer modeling indicates white roofs may be a good idea.
#displayname#

Pedal powered boat



from a gizmag article on a pedal powered boat set to sail from Vancover to Hawai this summer.

Patients Like Me

This is a fabulous talk by Jamie Heywood about a web site (patientsLikeMe.com) for medical analysis and social networking, where he is shows how people simply by sharing their experiences combined social networking and some data analysis can help predict solutions to medical treatments and problems.

I've been curious about this idea for many years. What if everyone shared how they feel, where they live, and what they do. Then crunch those numbers. How many toxic environments would be found, dangerous jobs singled out, and diseases could be seen. Maps showing the progress of the flu.. but better yet, what the people who didn't get that sick had in common. There is so much data out there, the problem is it is not shared, and no analysis is done!