I finally nailed down why I prefer Netbooks to Tablets, and why I am not a fan of tablets in general. Tablets are, for the most part, devices for media consumption; whereas netbooks are better at media creation.

I couldn’t see myself working on a novel on a tablet, short of rigging up an external keyboard. And if you’re going to do that, why not just get a damn netbook in the first place?

Sure, you could browse a forum or other social media site on your tablet, but trying to type a meaningful post onto it with your thumbs would be an exercise in patience and a large waste of time.

What really needs to happen, is for OEMs to start enabling phone service on tablets. With a Bluetooth headset, a 7″ tablet would be pretty much perfect for someone who isn’t trying to cram things into a pair of skinny jeans anyway.

Before we start, yes, I fully grasp the irony of what I’m about to write under the above, meme-derived title.

On the way home from work today I mashed my car stereo’s “on” button and settled in for the return commute.  A few minutes into the drive, after dodging idiots who managed to get a license without ever learning how to merge onto a freeway, AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells” came on the local rock station to which the radio was tuned.

I’d heard the song several billion times, so I wasn’t really paying it much attention, but for some reason the line “I won’t take no prisoners, won’t spare no lives / Nobody’s putting up a fight” jumped out at me.  And as many things tend to lately, something about it irked me.  After a moment or two of trying to ferret out of my subconscious why that was, I finally figured it out.  But instead of just coming out with the reason, I’m going to explain via dialogue. Read the rest of this entry »

Random thought/dime-store epiphany:

It occurs to me that, above all else – economic, military, ideological, or other forms of control over a society; that the most effective means of controlling large groups of people is to manipulate their expectations for their lives.

If the state, religion, or a private entity, can convince enough people that 2.5 kids, home ownership, a white picket fence, and retirement in Florida, for example is “a life well-lived”; then people who hold this belief are effectively fenced within said white pickets. The same went for the founders of ancient Sparta, the Samurai, or the Viking thanes; they shaped the expectation of thousands of lives within a frame that dictated that glory was to be sought, and on the battlefield.

Imagine if instead, someone managed to shape the expectations of enough people, that the point of all human life was to spread out into the universe; to discover everything there was to know about existence itself. Think about what we could accomplish if even a small percentage of people went from birth to death within this framework, with this definition of “a life well-lived”.

I just wanted to leave this here:

Painting by Conrad Ruiz.

This one, in response to the ever popular “women drivers suck” status post on a friend’s wall.

Although it’s also been demonstrated that, due to thousands of years of males being predominately hunters, we’re better at spacial recognition, judgement of distance, and anticipating others’ course corrections; all skills which are essential to good driving.

Women, however, are superior at distinguishing colors and patterns, which were skills that allowed them to discern which fruits and berries were good and which were deadly. Apparently women are able to perceive more shades of red than men as well.

So while men may actually be, as a gender, statistically better at driving, ultimately we’re still buying red sports cars to impress women; which tells you who really has the power in the situation.

Journalists who have a bias in any direction of the political spectrum beyond “facts” should be dragged out of their houses by the people and shot.

The job of a Journalist is to inform the population; an essential component of any Republic that ensures its citizens can make smart decisions when casting ballots.

When Journalists take it upon themselves to slant an issue, insert their own commentary, or effect political change towards an agenda they personally support, they are violating their duties in the same way as a gynecologist who gets off on fondling your girlfriend during an exam.

I’m not sure if it’s possible for a sentence that begins with the words “Archaeologists discover…” to be anything other than awesome.   Image is clickable, goes to appropriately awesome article.

I’m starting to think the Cufon effect on the blog is a bit much. Of course, it looks a lot better when the blog is populated with actual content, and not just a mashup of tweets.

Actually, I probably should de-bold the text of the tweets. Unfortunately, right now that’s priority #729, behind learning Arabic (#47) and re-unlocking the AK-47 on Modern Warfare (#681).

An old friend of mine is currently living in the Islamic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  While keeping up with the goings-on in her life over there, I’ve gotten a clear sense that she’s growing progressively more frustrated with how things are done in a country run by a fundamentalist religion.  I genuinely feel for her in that predicament.

Moral pantywaist apologists notwithstanding, I would hope most clear-headed people are aware of how culturally backwards things are in any country which allows itself to be governed by something as nebulous as faith, and ruled by something as archaic as a monarch.

But my contempt for that situation leads me down a path of thought that intersects with something else that I hold in great contempt; the fact that many (most?) people have a deep-seated need to subject themselves to some form of peonage, be it governmental, ideological, religious, or all three.

I get it, life is already hard enough as it is, and it’s extremely convenient to buy a pre-packaged set of morals, laws, or beliefs.  It’s even more convenient when they’re either free, or in some cases, you’d have to literally fight not to accept them.

I’m also not putting myself above this either; I consider myself a patriot, a Skeptic, and a futurist, all labels that provide others  a certain set of expectations as to my values and actions.  However, when I do label myself, for the sake of convenience, I also make an effort to “hang a lamp” on the fact that it’s precisely the convenience factor that compels me to do so.  Few people would actually care to know anyone’s entire set of values and convictions in casual conversation.  So the act of labeling oneself is useful to allow others to get a sense of who you are at the ten-thousand-foot level.

But just because you stick a label on your forehead that reads “Libertarian”, that doesn’t require you to cast a straight-party ballot, any more than wearing Joe Snuffy’s name tag makes you Joe Snuffy.  Too many people, however, do make this mistake and confuse their self-stuck labels with their core identity, instead of using them as tools for communication.  And when this happens, you start down the road towards the dangerous kind of group-think that destroys individuality, an ultimately, individual sovereignty.

A label isn’t a brand;  you should never be so attached to your convictions that you make them permanent, inescapable, and requiring vigilant devotion. By doing so you fail to allow yourself the opportunity to examine new evidence, consider new points of view, or ultimate, even think for yourself.  You also put yourself in a position where you are obligated to defend views in the face of evidence that refutes them.

The reason this issue concerns me is because of a trend I think I see emerging.  As religious faith in the western world is on the decline, it seems to be being replaced with a religious-like attachment to another ideology.  This is most noticeable in the Skeptics movement, of which as I’ve referenced, I consider myself a part.

If you follow a lot of  “Skeptics” online discussions, you often get a sense of a “party line” to be followed, which is counter to the fundamental nature of “Skepticism” in the first place.   And when you do run into this counter-intuitive phenomenon, it can be extremely frustration.

(For the record, I’m making this criticism as more of a “heads-up”, than an assault on the Skeptics movement, lest some of the conspiracy theorists, paranomalists, or garden-variety looneys try to reference this in an attempt at validating their nonsense.)

I think I owe anyone who reads this, examples of this happening.  Unfortunately I’m pressed for time a bit on what should have been a short jotting of things bouncing around in my head at the moment.  I’ll try to revisit that later, and include my observations about the subjects on which self-labeled Skeptics likely to suspend their critical thinking as well as the types of individuals who seem prone to doing so.

But the most important thing to take away from this is that, you are not your name tag, your labels, your government, or your religion.  You are you, and when you chose to stop being you in exchange for falling in-line with a label, you renounce your individuality.   A human being is not a hive insect; cultural, spiritual, and moral laziness should never be allowed to devolve him into one.

Weirdness; I just found out that Phrost.com used to be an anime forum back around 2001. I’ve been using the handle for longer than that so it’s even weirder. Here’s a link to the Internet Archive snapshot of Phrost.com 8 years ago.

Also, “RTOTD” can apparently stand for both “random thought of the day” and “re-tweet” of the day. Which is convenient given that I’m making an effort to commit to posting regularly, and retweeting important/relevant items is an easy source of content when things are busy. I’m still not exactly swimming in the Twitter kool-aid, but I can see its value as a hub for interacting with people in short bursts across multiple platforms (SMS, Web, Social Media).