Thought I would post Clare Daly's picture here. She's got bigger balls than half the men in the US Congress. She deserves recognition for speaking her mind.
The year is zipping along, increasing speed in conjunction with the growth of digital technology. I can't prove this is the case but I think this is true. Before the industrial revolution, people worked long, hard days but had leisure time. Now, the week-end off from work is over in a blink of an eye. 2013 is past the half way mark and it seems like it was just yesterday I was freezing my ass off dealing with sub below zero temperatures. The world of instant global communication has advantages but I really believe that we are tinkering with the fabric of space and time in ways we do not fully understand. Technology is a two edged sword. I may have to elaborate on this in a future post.
Goodbye June. I hardly knew you. I'll leave you with a few thoughts from John Cleese. It's good to laugh at yourself even if your nuts are in a vise.
Rock & Roll --- it doesn't get better than this.
When the shit gets deep, I find refuge here.
I did not consider the degree of anti-Obama sentiment present in the global political arena. I doubt if Moscow or any other country honestly gives a rat's ass about Snowden, but they are quick to jump at the opportunity to make Obama look inept or rub his nose in his own shit. Never underestimate man's proclivity to kick a fellow human being when he is down. Never underestimate how low a human being will stoop to ingratiate himself. Never underestimate the depths of human greed. Never underestimate the capacity of a human being to shit on his fellow man. Never underestimate the willingness of a human being to piss on another person for his own pleasure. Never underestimate the quickness and skill a human being possesses when it comes to stabbing a friend in the back.
We wrap ourselves in technology and strut our perceived sophistication for the world to see. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The Emperor isn't wearing any clothes.
I'm seeing a number of stories in the mainstream media concerning Edward Snowden. People know who he is. What people think he is remains a hot topic of debate. I personally don't think he told anyone anything that most of us didn't already suspect. How tech savvy do you have to be to realize that the US Government had the capacity to look at anything and everything you are doing on the Internet? Are you that naive to believe that you earn't being spied on? Pull your head out of your ass and look around you. There is a great deal of talk going on as to how the US is going to legally get Snowden out of Hong Kong so he can stand trial for being a fucking piece of shit al-Qaeda loving traitor. The fact that people are presumed to be innocent till proven guilty is an out-dated concept. If the majority of people using Twitter think you are guilty, then you can kiss your ass goodbye. So ask yourself this:
Question: How will the US get Edward Snowden out of Hong Kong?
Answer: In a pine box.
End of discussion. You do not need a doctorate in political science to figure that one out. I find it interesting that since this PRISM nonsense surfaced, the debacle in Benghazi has disappeared from the social consciousness. Isn' that special? Ponder that one if you have the guts to pull your head out of your behind.
This is just one person's opinion. You won't hear this sort of talk here in this country.
Found this also. I enjoyed watching the commitee members squirm in their seats when he started pointing fingers at the criminal cabal of psychopaths running the planet. I love the Internet.
The first day of Summer! The joy of hot humid Wisconsin days and nights filled with hungry blood sucking mosquitoes is right around the corner.
How sweet it is. The DWD issued new guidelines on how they will be conducting criminal background checks on new hires. I have it and I also have created an HTML version of it ready to be posted on the Internet. In fact, I have uploaded it to my server. I will be making the link to this document available but I won't do it today. I'm laying low for the time being. I see no reason not to. I do not believe I would be violating some State policy on letting anyone and everyone who is considering moving here to Wisconsin and working in this state from understanding just what they are getting themselves in to. That is a fair and open exchange of information. I don't trust the DWD to see it that way at this particular moment in time so I will sit on it for now.
I also had given thought to posting a few Tweets regarding PRISM. My better judgement told me to reconsider. I use my Twitter account to keep abreast on what the IT geeks are doing. I find great resource links to video, podcasts, and blog posts. I enjoy it. Since I won't be posting them on Twitter for the eyes of the Twitter universe to see, I'll post them here in my little cubby hole of the WWW.
If it will help fight terrorism, the NSA can install a camera in my toilet.
PRISM is the greatest technological creation since the invention of the electric dildo.
I still may post the first one. It works on so many different levels;
1) According to the government, al-Qaeda is everywhere. From the sound of it they might even be up my ass, so you better check.
2) Here is what I think of your spy program.
3) You wanted to invade my privacy, so this is what you get. Enjoy the view.
I am the eternal optimist at heart but I listen to my brain first and my heart second. My heart tells me that the fog that has settled on the minds of most people will lift as soon as the light of reality comes pouring in. The light is pouring in but it isn't finding any minds to enlighten. The general public is a pile of soft, weak, and pliable shit that has been beaten down, and numbed down to the point of utter stupidity.The intellectual level of the average person walking the street is that of a child. They watch the "barbie news" channels and eat the manure being shoved down their throats as if it were candy. People can't think anymore. Why should they when some middle age cougar or younger hot looking bimbo is telling them what they are supposed to be thinking? If CNN is telling me that the government is collecting the entire Internet lock, stock, and byte in order to protect me from the terrorist boogie man hiding under my bed, then who am I to question otherwise? A right winger who was endorsing PRISM as a whole brought up a few questions he thought were important to ask.
1) Who are the people working under the NSA big shots running the program?
2) Are they technically qualified to deal with this enormous amount of data?
3) Can they be trusted with this data?
4) Why is the NSA keeping everything they have when the majority of Americans have nothing to do with terrorism?
5) What is being done with this data that is non-terrorist related?
These are good questions. The CNN anchor woman conducting the interview said,
"I see you can't get past the idea that the government has to collect this information to protect America from terrorist plots. I guess you didn't read the story that over 50 terrorist plots were foiled thanks to PRISM".
She ridiculed this man. He wasn't criticizing PRISM. He was asking some hard question on how the data was being handled. That is the way the wind is blowing. Don't ask questions. Believe what you are told to be believe. If you don't, you are judged a terrorist sympathizer. I like the term being tossed around in the media. These hearings on PRISM are not really hearings on the outrageous and ludicrous assault this program is on the civil liberties of the American people. It is a public forum to educate the people on it's wonderful merits. It isn't evil. It's good for us. I made a joke to one of my co-workers watching this CNN interview. I said,
I know what I'll be doing this summer. I'm going to summer camp -- re-education camp -- just like the kind they had in Cambodia.
I like to give both sides a voice. I listen to what the media is telling me. I investigate what other points of view are. I find collaborating evidence to support my conclusions. The sad fact is that the reporting of news in the Walter Cronkite vein is long dead. News is not reported. It's spin. An agenda is being pushed and you better damn well spout the party line if you know what's good for you.
Rest in Peace Walter. The world is a far more dangerous place without you.
It is important to witness true rebellion as it happens. In this sick pathetic world of media spin, the truth will raise it's ugly head for those to see in all it's glory. What is happening in Turkey is nothing different than what has happened in other parts of Europe. The average citizen is fed up with this austerity/autocratic bull shit. It is only a matter of time before the same thing happens right here in the USA. I hope it never comes to that but if the drum keeps beating to the sound of corporate fascism, the pitch forks will come out.
I renewed my domain name and server space for three additional years. I haven't got a clue where or what I may be doing three years from now, but keeping this rant rolling along into the future is important to me. It may or may not be important to anyone else but this is the nature of things. You have to keep pursuing those things that bring you meaning in life. Often, your contribution to society or the good you did for other is not appreciated until after you are long cold in the grave. Life is a series of thankless events where you, for the most part, are taken for granted.
I have been spinning my wheels again darting to and from projects and desires. It is a difficult thing to stay focused on one topic when so much of the quantum data stream is exploding into your consciousness. Information is always good and is not wasted. Unrelated things are all connected by endpoints in the great vast informational data stream. I have looked at functional and OOP. They are both good. Haskell is top shelf. I know more about Powershell than anything else but I have been looking at it longer. I am going to dive back into it and master the language/scripting end. I am also going to seriously tackle Python. It just keeps getting bigger. It is used as an administration tool and a web development tool. It is on the back end too. It is everywhere. Python is like all the rest of the scripting/program languages; you have to find your niche. Your value as a scientist lies in your ability to master a small discipline. This is craft. This is where true creation takes place. God is in the details.
I could rant and rave about PRISM, but Ted does it so well. Hard to compete with his level of sheer disgust and outrage. I do have a point to make about the FBI insistence that collecting the entire Internet informational light stream ( data) is the best way to safe guard Americans from the boogie men out there who want to destroy our way of life. The FBI had excellent intelligence handed to them on a silver platter straight from the KGB concerning Tamerlan Tsarnaev. What did they do with it? They did nothing with it. What good is the data being collected from PRISM going to do when it is being handed over to incompetent fools who can't find their asses with two hands? Remember the FBI agent who raised a red flag concerning the flight school training of Mohamed Atta? What was done about this suspicious situation and the money trail of funding the training led to? Nothing was done. His superior officers quashed the investigation. If the FBI can't recognize red flags waving in their faces, or even have the gumption to get off their dead asses to investigate reliable intelligence handed to them, why do they have to have this massive dump of Internet data? They haven't proven competence to deal with it, so they should not have access to it. Plain and simple. I think the real question is this. What are they really doing with this information? I think Ted made a good point if you filtered it out of the ranting. It is a set up to manufacture a legal case against anyone they want to at any time in the future they want to. I have said this before and this comes straight from the heart; God help us.
*Note*
I saw an obituary for Peter S. Bell recently on-line. I have mentioned Peter in a past post or two. We both worked for Capital Newspapers at one time. I had said he was the "sickest bastard" I ever knew. I have a tendency to be hash. I shoot straight from the hip and I make no excuses for this. Peter was a sick bastard. We all have our quirks but this individual went way off the deep end when it came to proclivity. Peter worked hard and had little to nothing to show for it. He had no friends to speak of as far as I know. The obituary I read said he died at home of natural causes. There was to be no services. I am sad to hear this. Dying alone, unsung and unknown is not what most of us envision when we pass over to the next life. Maybe it doesn't really matter. Peter had good qualities. The world is full of worthless human beings and to his credit, he wasn't one of them.
A Saudi Arabian prince has been accused of kidnapping, raping a girl and dumping her body in the streets.
Although police in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia have confirmed that a girl was indeed raped and murdered by a Saudi prince, the prince has not yet been charged, reports say.
One day. It took one stinking day to verify the post I made yesterday. How many people have these animals murdered that the world never knew about? Read the full story HERE.
I haven't got much to say at the moment. I'm sticking my head inside the world of scripting. I won't call it programming. I am not a programmer and most likely will not be. I am a language person. I love language. I understand the power language has. I will be able to make better web pages eventually if I push myself to do so. It isn't a sink or swim situation. I am doing this because I find the discipline fascinating. There are a number of other things that are more important I really should be focused on, but it is what it is.
A Saudi Arabian billionaire prince has sued Forbes magazine in London, accusing the publication of underestimating his wealth in its highly scrutinized annual list of the world's richest people.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal claims the magazine was "deliberately biased" when ranking him at a lowly 26th place in its 2013 tally of the super wealthy, according to court documents cited by the United Kingdom's Guardian newspaper.
The magazine pegged his net worth at $20 billion. The prince claims it is closer to $30 billion. The difference? About $9.6 billion, the Guardian reported.
What an arrogant piece of shit this royal scum bag is. I remember when I was living in MPLS. A student I knew there was telling me that the royal family were the first ones to grab swords and start cutting people's hands off when in fact they were nothing but perverts and degenerates. I believe it. That is what great wealth can do to a person. It doesn't elevate them to a higher standard of conduct. It does just the opposite. Money is the root of all evil.
Richard Stallman is a genius. His perspective on software and how technology has been used to enslave is spot on. This is a fine presentation from a man some consider an asshole.
It is concise, lucid, and alarming in it's accuracy of the present times and where the future is heading. The NSA stories are just the tip of the iceberg.
I made it passed May without getting laid off, so that is a good sign. My present job is stable. I'm paying my bills. I have my health.
I am proceeding forward with my computer education. In fact, I have been looking more closely at Python. It is a good introductory language to study. I re-looked at Powershell. I still have a grip on it but I really need to use it everyday to master some part of it. I have a broad understanding and it is time to focus on mastering the scripting aspect of this command line language. Scripting is a skill worthy of mastery. To better understand scripting I will dive into learning a functional programming language.
That's about the size of it. I have a couple things I am looking into. I have spent way to much time not attacking life with the gusto it deserves. Damn this blasted crazy civilization. I knew at much too early of an age that I was going to be in for a rough go of it. I was right. Things could be worse. I may have lost time but I never stopped making the effort to become something greater today than I was yesterday. In this respect, I am and have been moving forward at a constant rate. This is worth realizing when times are dark.
The more I look at programming, the clearer it becomes I may never fully grasp it. That is OK. I am a language guy. I'm looking at the MIT course 6.00 Introduction to Computer Science and Programming (Fall 2008 - Spring 2013) to stretch my mind. This course has made clear particulars concerning Powershell scripting. I can't see myself actually using Python to build something; the MIT course uses Python examples. It is possible for me to build something with HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. This site is proof of that. The MIT course will help me get my head around JavaScript. From what I have gathered, jQuery can do anything that JavaScript can do and it is easier. Those who toil in production environments use jQuery. This is not a bad thing but productivity takes precedence over craft. I heard a podcast that brought up this point (Heilmann). Can someone who uses jQuery exclusively be called a JavaScript Developer? I have seen video where people are using CSS3 to do just about anything that JavaScript can do. What I got out of the podcast just mentioned is this; use the right tool for the right job. That is mastery. That is where the art lies. I may never reach this level either. I have today and tomorrow off. I am going to dive into this book written by Christian Heilmann; Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax: From Novice to Professional (2006). I was impressed with the podcast he did. He knows his craft and he knows where the money is and he is not shy of saying so. I have read so many parts of so many books never making the time to read one single book cover to cover. This manuscript will get the 100% treatment. The next on the list will be jQuery in Action (2010) and JavaScript the Good Parts (2008). This will get my foot in the IT door if I wish to stick it in there. JavaScript and Powershell are my bread and butter languages. I will tackle Scheme because it is a functional programming language and functions are first class citizens in JavaScript. So many dreams, so little time. It's all good. I really do have to stay focused on acquiring IT job skill. That is why my gut says hammer JavaScript and jQuery. This is where the money is. I have a plan on what I will do with Powershell, but I won't go into detail at this time.
How can the news media jump with joy at all the happy news concerning the US economy? According to CNN and the rest of the cabal, things are looking great. It goes without saying. The news isn't worth watching anymore, unless you like reality television and soap operas. Wealth of most Americans Down 55%
**Note**
Been watching The Pawnbroker (1964) starring Rod Steiger. I had seen it before, remembering it was good. Quincy Jones wrote the soundtrack. The movie was far more intense than I recalled. Life is cruel. We are born into this cruelty and even though we enjoy moments of comfort and security, fate can rip our balls clean off with no warning. There is no peace inherent in living. There is no rest. Since there is no rest, the only course is to create what we can while we can despite the chaos the haunts us at every turn. If the world can find beauty in our creation for a brief glimmer, then our lives will have been well spent.
Feeling good on this fine June day. The more focused I am on improving myself through the study of language, the clearer things become.
How JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3 work together is a simple concept, but the craft is the realm of masters. How JQuery and other libraries work with these technologies is magic. If you don't understand magic, you will never reach mastery. People who are IT professionals are able to do great things but few of these people really understand the craft. They perform tasks. They are not magicians. They may never attain the rank of Master. I may not either, but I understand the distinction. The more I study programming, the greater my understanding of Powershell becomes. Being a jack of all trades is a strong point but a weakness non the less. I have never mastered anything. I strive to master myself. Mastery is not a destination. Mastery is a journey. That is what separates those who perform tasks from true magicians. People who toil rest. The artist is driven and is constantly moving forward into the eternity of time and space.
