WebWriting.com

In celebration of having only 380 days of bush left to go, a few links:

25 George W. Bush Facts

The Bush Countdown Blog

Six hospital staff including nurses, doctors and administrators on a smoking break outside the Nessel Cancer Services building.

Almost ended up taking the train to Salem this morning. That would have been interesting. Clearly something wrong with my coffee…

Only reason Huckabee is sticking it out is so that McCain will pick him for VP.

If you like commercials…I mean football, databases and politics and live in the greater Boston area this week is like Christmas, New Years and…well…Super Bowl Sunday back to back to back. I’m looking forward Super Bowl as is most of New England (and wherever that other team is from) though as usual more for the food and commercials. I do hear it is supposed to be a decent game as well. Monday brings the very first Database Day at MIT including talks from Dave DeWitt, and some recent database technology developments. And on Tuesday Massachusetts sees its first significant Democratic primary in over 20 years (and notably the first primary in which I feel compelled to vote). This week is shaping up to be an exciting week!

In an article by James Maguire, Robert Dewar rebuts criticism to his claim that Java is the root of all evil…I mean, is a symptom of the complacency exhibited by universities when it comes to training intelligent and skilled computer scientists (some of whom become quality programmers and software engineers). I’ll grant he may have some conceptual troubles understanding causality (note that I said symptom of where he says responsible for). Semantics aside, Dr. Dewar comes close to yet does not explicitly state the core problem. Good engineers enjoy solving systems problems (as opposed to social problems). Instead of designing courses to be generally appealing, universities should be optimizing for attracting and training problem solvers. This may mean adopting more esoteric approaches that do not readily make sense to companies looking for “java developers” and instead training problem solvers who can learn the tactical skills necessary to solve industry problems.

I’ve been looking through the features offered by Xobni which covers some of the things we were trying to capture with D.A.L.I. Software. They’ve got a neat referral program where clicking on this button:
will tell them that I’m referring people to their semi-closed beta program. If you click and I get to try the software I’ll write about it. If not, I’ll have to wait until they open it up…and then I’ll probably write about it.

The MBTA has been updating North Station over the past year and just recently installed new LED callboard for trains. I was amused this morning to see the sign transition and hear a simulated clickety clack that has log been associated with old style callboards that work by flipping cards.

For those of you a late to the game there’s still time to catch the latest “Wonder Years” like saga of a voice over narrator and his anecdotic youth. Though surprised they didn’t cast Fred Savage for the part of Ted Mosbey, our generation is comforted still by the endearing words of Bob Saget, former loving father of three (ok, four) blondes. A show that if it succeeds in its quest to work its way into the vernacular could be a contender for the “Seinfeld” of our generation, “How I Met your Mother” has gone well beyond the plateau created by shows such as “Scrubs” in integrating the burgeoning community of HMYMites. While it maintains culturally relevant music, self-referential clichés, and a facebook profile, HIMYM has a clear grasp on the fundamental experiences that defined us as the grunge generation. Far from being “a show about nothing,” while on eternal quest for that singular story identified by its namesake HIMYM continues to assemble a collection of non-sequiturs and idioms that may yet propel it to the level of “Double Dipping” and “Festivus” whose origins we in all likelyhood first caught in re-runs on TBS (sadly not in HD). The mix of characters (a “normal” guy, a “crazy” guy and two incorrigible accessories) closely mirrors the chemistry that gave Seinfeld nine long years resulting in everyone going to jail (hope I didn’t ruin that for anyone). As the normal guy, Ted Mosbey mostly has things happening to him and regularly discovers that the situation usually gets worse when he tries to actually do something. The show seems to be held back by the driving need for Ted to find his future wife. While the quest was a useful crutch to kick off the series, HIMYM is at risk of being plagued by the same matchmaking syndrome that doomed “Scrubs” to mediocrity in season four. Here’s hoping HIMYM can drop the albatross of plot devices that is relationships and continue to concoct shenanigans that are the stuffs of watercooler conversation.

I was initially taken aback by this blog’s High School rating at the Blog Readability Test. Certainly this puts me in my place compared to Concurring Opinions which clocks in at College (Undergrad). I then posited that I might better judge my level of sophistication based on the blogs I read until I saw their ratings at Middle School and Elementary School levels (links withheld to protect the innocent). Perhaps this means I read blogs that are accessible or perhaps I’m just lazy in what I choose to read.

The crack reporting team at the New York Times have broken the story on how Pet Projects Are Flourishing in Congress. Never mind that “the Democratic totals are less than half than the record set by Republicans when they controlled Congress in 2005,” because “they are far higher than the levels just 10 years ago.” Just ten years ago! The rest of the article is copy and pasted from congressional reports and the same quotations repeated by different members of congress. If you make it past the headline towards the end of the first page of dribble you might learn that thought “the volume of earmarks in spending bills has exploded in the past decade, from about 3,000 in 1996 to almost 16,000 in 2005,” in fact “critics acknowledge that the Democrats have made the system less secretive and slightly less of a free-for-all.”

Checkout my twitter profile.

Dial tone

“Standard” phone ring

Records

Cassette Tapes

CDs

Desktop computer

Live TV

Roaming

Being without a phone

Ethernet

Floppy Disk

Non-hybrid car

$1/gallon gasoline

The evening news

A regular commute

CRTs

Film

VCRs

Rewind to start

Commercial interruptions

Long Distance phone call

Manual car door locks

Turn-key ignition

Spitting watermelon seeds

“Stop wasting film”

7 digit phone numbers

There have been numerous references to the war in Iraq as Vietnam, WWII and the American Civil War. A more apt comparison (and likely eventual outcome) is the British in Palestine. The US seems to be repeating the mistakes of the British Empire and Soviet Union. Best I can tell our only hope is to elect a leader who has some common sense or has at least read some.

Very cool
Rube Goldberg machine

They say sales is all about telling a story. Some stories are too long.

A detailed analysis of Gen Y in the workplace - from one of our own.

Flags of the world by area of color. Click a flag to see which country.

It is amazing how well connected the US and UK intelligence agencies must be to know that they only need to check for gallon back full of mini 3oz containers at US and UK airports. I’m very impressed that they so easily ruled out flights from every other country that flies into the US or UK and all bus and railway traffic. At least I assume they know that terrorists aren’t planning on using 4oz of liquid explosives via those methods of transportation because they don’t check.

SNL is thinking along the same lines…

Terrorism is an action against people. If people are not terrorized then the actions are ineffectual – some might even argue that if the people are terrorized but fail to respond as anticipated (e.g. Osama Bin Laden wants US influence out of the Mid East and one might argue he’s making very little progress) then the terror has also failed. In any case, the defense against terrorism, i.e. security, is also an action that’s based on people. In protecting people from terror (presumably involving some harm) security is on successful if people feel safe. This is why Security Theater is often effective. Make people feel safe, not terrorized and you are effectively defeating the end goal of terrorists. Conversely, if you trigger an alarm and fail to explain the reason, people feel less safe and in some cases, more terrorized by the very organizations that are trying to defend them.

We were traveling on the London Tube the other day and after stopping at Green Park an announcement came on the loudspeaker that the station was being evacuated. The doors were open and the train was stopped – there was no explanation and so people started getting off the train to evacuate. This apparently was not the intended behavior as the train operator quickly corrected us to stay on the train. With the platform clear the train sped off to the next station. A couple stops later we got out and never again to hear about the incident. Does this make us feel safe? Sudden evacuation and conflicting or missing information, while rarely causing as much physical harm as destructive terrorism can have tremendous psychological effects. Security is not a matter of protecting numbers of people from harm, to be effective security must make people feel safe.