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Showing posts from February, 2009

Making shit angels as therapy

“ Studies into clinical depression have yielded similar findings, leading to the development of an intriguing, but still controversial, concept known as depressive realism . This theory puts forward the notion that depressed individuals actually have more realistic perceptions of their own image, importance, and abilities than the average person. While it’s still generally accepted that depressed people can be negatively biased in their interpretation of events and information, depressive realism suggests that they are often merely responding rationally to realities that the average person cheerfully denies .” I think that seeing things too clearly is making me a bit blind to the beauty that’s all around me -- a beauty that needs a healthy dose of that good old gooey bullshit to really shine in the abstract of distraction that makes the lubricant of hopeful wishing attractive -- allowing for a different, and more cuddly, reality a become a possibility -- much like

Sweden's Pirates

I have a goal of someday writing a novel, selling it to a publisher, then making a living writing. Pirate Bay is a file sharing aggregate who takes copyrighted material and allows anyone to download it for free. I support them with all my heart and wish them the best. Talk about in congruent behavior -- this is something like cutting off my nose to spite my face. But there is more to the story. Copy write protection was seen in the past as a protection for the individual in his lifetime. Information was thought to be a good thing for society, but it was also felt that the person who provided new information should be allowed to live off it as a sort of reward for his hard work. After asutable amount of time it was expected to become free to all. It was felt very strongly that information should be both free and in the public domain as quick as possible. Copy write law is no longer protection for an individual -- it's a machine to stomp out innovation. I am still pi

Formal announcement of the opening of my campaign for the MacArthur Fellowship

“If not me, who? If not now when?” Mike Brady 2009 Q. What is the MacArthur Fellowship ? A. The MacArthur Fellowship is a five-year grant to individuals who show exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future. The fellowship is designed to provide recipients with the flexibility to pursue their creative activities in the absence of specific obligations or reporting requirements. There are no limits on age or area of activity. Individuals cannot apply for this award; they must be nominated . Q. What are the selection criteria? A. The selection decisions focus primarily on exceptional creativity, as demonstrated through a track record of significant achievement, and manifest promise for important future advances. Emphasis is placed on nominees for whom our support would relieve limitations that inhibit them from pursuing their most innovative ideas. Recipients must also be citizens or residents of the United States and must not hold ele

Science Crap on a Stick

Science Crap on a Stick "Phantom OS doesn't have files . Well, there are no files in the sense that a developer opens a file handle, writes to it, and closes the file handle. From the user's perspective, things still look familiar — a desktop, directories, and file icons. But a file in Phantom is simply an object whose state is persisted. You don't have to explicitly open it. As long as your program has some kind of reference to that object, all you need to do is call methods on it, and the data is there as you would expect." I have read the long version of the above explanation of the future of operating systems . It was inspiring in a crazy person detailing the laws of Deuteronomy sort of way – both fluid, yet organized as if some reality was being described from a megaphone aimed at you carefully from the moon. Not our moon – another, different, moon in a far off bizzaro universe of candy colored logic pretzels where you could chew things

Lincoln's Generals

Lincoln’s Generals Very much in Lincoln’s pattern, it’s clear that Obama will be fighting an economic war with less than the best. Many a McClellan will be tasked to fight, but will only waste time doing techno with the deck chairs – shaping them into pretty patterns that, of course, should work. Our Grant will come, if we are lucky, after we grind meat off bones and litter the landscape with ruined, but strangely stoic, children of the sort of well to do. Grant won by sending hundreds of thousands of men directly to their death, and that’s what it took. The generals before him tried everything they could to avoid what had to be done, but half measures availed them nothing – it only delayed and made worse the inevitable choices. To save the nation, it had to be destroyed with the hope that from the ashes something better could be built. The stimulus is not enough. Compromise is not possible with slave traders or republicans – there is no middle ground to meet them at. Both have shown t