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John Leo blogs that Bill Clinton typifies the head-in-the-sand attitude of Democrats when it comes to terrorism. I think John Leo is flat out wrong. Bill Clinton is wrong too - terrorism should not be 3rd on our list, it should not even be in the top ten when it comes to world problems. In fact, it rates well under theocratic regimes such as Iran and what used to be Iraq and Afghanistan - neither of which are really a large scale world problem. There are 6 billion people on the planet and most of them will die from heart attacks, cancer, preventable accidents and curable diseases. There are millions of species of life on this planet of which humans are exactly one - that is to say that we as a species represent less than one millionth of the diversity on this planet. Drastic changes to the earths climate may endanger thousands of those species if not more.

So, do we have to address issues of dictatorships and terrorism?
Sure.

Should we devote a steady stream of effort to promoting democracy through education to improve the lives of billions of people living under totalitarian governments?
Of course!

Is this a hit and run war or a marathon or diplomacy, economics and education?
It is a marathon.

Does terrorism matter?
In the long run - not at all.

Alan Turing defined a test (coined the Turing Test) by which to judge whether an artificial system was intelligent. The double-blind test involves participants communicating with at least two different unknown entities over terminal that masks their true identity. If most participants could not tell the difference between the natural and artificial entities then, Turing reasoned, we might deem the artificial one just as intelligent as the natural one.

A recent study at Purdue University tested psychological and biological reactions to Sony’s AIBO electronic dog. Based on the results it seems we’re not far off.

Full disclosure: My wife and I are the proud owners of a 1 year old AIBO. He’s due for a software upgrade next week.

I was watching West Wing on DVD and when I turned of the player Emeril was on. Emeril is an amusing host and spends a lot of time repeating himself or explaining what he just said using different works. It’s an effective technique when you’re playing to a crowd. Seems to me George W. Bush would be a great TV chef - or TV something, preferably one that stops when I turn off the TV.

Cory over a Boing Boing has an a-ha moment after reading John Battelle’s The Search. If I follow Cory’s thinking, at some point it must become cheaper to lose what you’ve finished using instead of filing and keeping it When you need it later you just search.

In the real world you give away or sell your books, music, videos and when you want one, just search and buy it again. If the cost of acquisition means you don’t need the square footage to keep it then the only question is “how long do you have to wait between wanting it and getting it?”

In the virtual world, storage means hard drive space or maintaining your folders and backups. If you found something you like on-line use it and delete it - or keep it in a bin, but don’t bother categorizing it and backing it up. When you need it again, just search. Better yet, just add it to Greg’s Group Networked Backup and you’ll never have to keep track of anything ever again.

I found the following Cheny quotation via Davenetics:

“Either we’re serious about fighting the war on terror or we’re not. Either we believe that there are individuals out there doing everything they can to try to launch more attacks, to try to get ever deadlier weapons to use against, or we don’t. The President and I believe very deeply that there’s a hell of a threat, that it’s there for anybody who wants to look at it. And that our obligation and responsibility given our job is to do everything in our power to defeat the terrorists. And that’s exactly what we’re do.”

I might be mistaken, but I believe that what we should be fighting for is freedom, liberty, equality and justice. Today, some would argue that we should be fighting for the right to privacy and security. I understand that there are people who are trying to make it more difficult for us to achieve our goals of freedom, liberty, equality and justice but at what point do the methods by which we attempt to thwart them end up being counter-productive? Is it when we ourselves are attacking our own privacy and security? What’s worse: getting randomly blown up by a terrorist or arbitrarily imprisoned and tortured by your own government?

Dave Winer writes (can’t find the link, used to be http://www.scripting.com/2005/12/12.html#whosLeftToResign):

It’s hard to follow your own act. My high school social studies teacher, Mr Goldman, once offered some philosophy about this. Don’t try.

He said this after throwing some wadded paper into a waste basket across the room. “Dear kiddies, he said, listen up. This is the most important advice I’ll ever give you. When you sink a shot from across the room, act like it’s no big deal, and whatever you do, don’t try again.”

Sounds similar to the advice of a recent manager: Don’t sell past the close.

I fell ill late Thursday night following a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat and spent the following long weekend moping around the house high on tea with lemon and honey. Following much speculation I ran into a friend who I had seen the previous Saturday at a party. Turns out he was sick as well.

I’d joked with my wife about replicating the chicken pox parties our parent’s had when we were kids so that we could time when were going to get sick each winter. It’s almost as if someone thought of it first but didn’t tell anyone.

Speaking of digging up old draft posts, this one is very fitting for this time of year. I posted my list of questions to help talk to your kids and my dad’s list of five things that matter. Here is my list of three Rules of Thumb for life:

1) Do what you love
2) Be good to others
3) Think and plan ahead

With the unprecedented success of Intelligent Design followed by the miraculous theory of Intelligent Falling we turn again to our beloved principle of Intelligence Everywhere (IE) to better understand the dangerous forces that are ravaging our precious gulf coast. It is readily apparent to geophysicists everywhere that the cause of the increasing frequency and force of hurricanes is due to an Intelligent Warming that is causing these climate changes. The only question that remains is: what does this Intelligent Warmer have in store for us?

My office is in the same building as a psychologist’s office so I’ll occasionally pass by a patient in the hall on the way to the shared bathroom. I recently overheard a teenage boy on the way in with his Mother express his insecurity about their up coming appointment. The brief exchange got me thinking about what is really important that a teenager know and that a parent know. Following some brainstorming I came up with the list of questions I would ask a teenager to make sure he or she is on the ball. The answers don’t matter because a teenager is going to do whatever they want regardless. The questions ate probative and are intended first to make them think and second to open the door to dialog with their parents.

* Do you exercise? Ride a bike? Skateboard? Rollerblade? Wear a helmet?
* Do you smoke? Do drugs?
* Are you having sex? Is it monogamous? Are you being safe?
* Do you express yourself creatively?
* Are you happy with your life?
* Do you respect your parents?
* What’s the most urgent thing about them you would want to change?
* What’s the most important thing to them about you that they would want to change?
* Do you study? Do your homework?
* How often do you think about these questions?

This is an elaboration of what my dad calls the high five - the five things that matter - questions to ask first thing in the morning:

* Did you wake up (duh) and are you healthy?
* Is your significant other awake and healthy?
* Are your kids (family) awake and healthy?
* Will there be food on the table tonight?
* Did you pay the rent or mortgage?

If you answer yes to all five, you’re ready to start the day knowing that everything else is a trifle. I’ll follow up sometime with questions to help transition from the first set to the second (i.e. questions for a young adult).

“A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.”
-Herbert Hoover

I started a post to rant about fiscal irresponsibility among generations X and Y - both the new parents and the DINKS (Dual Income No Kids) but got lost focusing in on a point. It’s not an easy argument to assemble which perhaps is why so many of our generation have failed to set reasonable personal policies for managing their money. Reading a Yahoo/Forbes special article onBuying the American Dream I realized the prevalence of foolish beliefs that there’s nothing wrong with living to the limit (or even beyond) of one’s means. We seem to have reach a point where we don’t think twice before spending every last dime of our personal incoming. We have come to expect the griefs of living month to month as simply the cost of living wherever it is that we’ve made our home when in fact we’re neglecting to make the difficult decisions, to muster the will power it takes to save or to think more than a month in advance. While much of this can be blamed on the atmosphere fostered by society - from the media’s focus on glamorous lifestyles to credit companies irresponsible lending - at the end of the day it’s our debt. And there’s a lot of debt on our hands. The advice is simple (limit spending, pay down debt, save and invest) but we seem to come up short on the follow through. It’s time we realize that even a million dollars isn’t what it used to be and you shouldn’t be spending your savings on a vacation home or a second luxury car when you’re both working full time to bring in $200k. To highlight the level of absurdity we’ve reached consider that the ideal breakdown of income for a new family is 30% long term debt (usually a house) 30% spending 30% savings and 10% for a rainy day while in reality we’re spending upwards of 50% on debt (some not so well leveraged) and most of there remainder on what used to qualify as luxury, saving less than 1%, including for that rainy day. When the storm hits (not if) we’re going to be in trouble.

“Intelligent Design” is the theory that human complexity surpasses the explanations of common complexity theory and is a result of some Intelligent Design. Since humans are intelligent and we cannot create such complexity from nothing, it is plausible to argue that the force that created humans was of a Stupendously Intelligent Design (StupID). Provided the StupID hypothesis we may inquire as to the attributes of this designer. For the sake of analysis we can postulate that there is a single Great Designer ordained in some way to create humans. This Great Ordained Designer, if we choose to believe in him, must have been aware of all possible challenges that humans are to overcome if his design was to succeed as it has. This omniscience must be acquired by some force of observation. The world is constantly changing and the requirements for human design must be synchronized with the environment and it is necessary for the designer to be ubiquitous in order to observe and maintain his design. These two attributes are not easy to achieve. We could reason that a sophisticated enough being might be distributed so as to both observe and maintain such a design. The primary concern for such distribution is power - both to maintain the distributed entities and to communicate changes that need to be reflected in the design. The conclusion we drawn then is that the Great Ordained Designer is not only omniscient and ubiquitous but also omnipotent. A StupID “theory” indeed.

“In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.”
-Benjamin Franklin

Given the Bush Administration’s policies, I’m not sure we can be certain of anything anymore.

Propositon: If you earn X dollars per year then every productive hour of your time is worth approximately X/2000 (before tax).

In real numbers a salary of $50,000 a year values each productive hour of your time at $25. Of ourse if you work too many hours then you burn out; too few you lose your skills, but 40 to 80 hours a week are considered productive. Given an appropriate balance it’s fair to say that every hour you might otherwise be productive you are spending approximately $25. When you go to see a movie, you’re not just buying a $10 ticket because those two hours could otherwise be productive and expensable.

It’s easy to see how this kind of thinking could make a person a workaholic. Indeed when you begin to see things not in terms of time but rather in terms of money you’re liable to drive yourself crazy over what you might otherwise be earning. They key to managing your time is to understand that all this capital – all this time – is yours to spend. In fact you get another $25 every hour for the rest of your life (that’s not counting raises). If you have $60 to spend on a movie and you’ve decided you want to see a movie, it’s yours to spend and there’s no reason you shouldn’t profit from your innate wealth.

You should also consider how much or how little you need to spend to finish all those things that have been piling up. Most importabtly you should consider how much you would like to spend on your family and friends.