Midweek madness

[silveradept]

Mrrrrrg. Absentmindedness flared up again. This time, I got so pissed off about it that I've started setting alarms to appear and asked whether I could get a cheap PDA. Something needs to chirp at me, I guess, to remind me of anything happening. I even wrote this one down and still forgot it. Hopefully, they're not too mand, and I'll be able to make it up on Monday. It wasn't anything significant or important, but it shakes my confidence in being trusted with anything that actually is. I think I'd forget my own birthday, if it wasn't on an important day for this country.

Tomorrow is an international day of Peace. Would that it were truly so, and that the day after was another day of peace, and so forth, and so forth.

Are the first Turing-capable entities going to have the majority of their data from call centers? It's certainly a way to mine things and extract conversational data. Maybe next year, the programs will be that much bigger and better.

And maybe, just maybe, they'll make better decisions than Fox. Fox has decided to lauch FoxFaith, a film unit devoted to making up to 12 films a year aimed for the religious crowd. So we might see a Mini-Passion every month. Doesn't that just make your heart sing?

The Attorney general is asking Congress to require ISPs to save records. "Wont they think of the children?" is his justification.

Speaking of stupid things, the U.S. military is delaying the purchase of a working RPG point-defense system because they'd rather have their contractor develop one. They are playing with lives here, and the dicking around is really a bad thing. Body counts down is good, and this tech might actually help the soliders make some progress towards the objectives of having a peace to keep.

Things you may have never seen on the news or the Internet news - Project Censored's list of the 25 most censored news stories for this year. Headlines like "Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran" that you might not have seen in the NYT. Again, I'm not sure whether these are just overlooked or actively squished, but they may be interesting to peruse. #24 says that Cheney's Haliburton stock went up more than 3000% the last year. Public trust, yes, but are the pols manipulating things so that when they get out, they'll have made significant money?

Anyway, that's all there is from me tonight. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel able to take the day on again.

Comments

[shenalia.livejournal.com]

As for the RPGs: That's the same political bullcrap within the higher military officials (and administration officials involved with such!) as what caused the Air Force's recent need to cut over 42,000 personnel. In the prior instance, a beaurocrat didn't want his pet project cut due to finding a better product. In the latter instance, a bunch of Senators didn't want outdated aircraft - and the bases dedicated to maintaining them, at a greater cost than they are worth tactically - being phased out because they, and the bases they're at, are in "their districts".

Fucking beaurocracies.

[silveradept]

It does sound like red tape at its finest. If this were snafus making it tough to deploy for this engagement, I might snicker a bit more and call it part of the checks and balances, but since there are lives in the balance now, I'm much more likely to scream at them and want them to provide proper protection to the soliders. You don't play with lives just to satisfy your pet project. It's just not right.

[idan-cohen.livejournal.com]

You don't play with lives just to satisfy your pet project. It's just not right.

Every military project-leader in the history of mankind, well-meant or avaracious, disagrees.

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

The thing is, even in science, well meaning researchers have been playing with lives for centuries.

Case in point: the way they discovered that Yellow fever was transmitted by a mosquito vector was by filtering plasma from people infected with Yellow Fever and injecting it into other people ... and watching them die. Eventually this experiment saved millions of lives, but boy does it seem cruel now.

[silveradept]

I suppose. And to some degree there's some "higher" justification as to why you're futzing with people's lives. But putting lives at risk when there's a working alternative that can be used until you come up with the perfect solution, whatever it may be, is pretty dangerous and stupid.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Don't be so hard on yourself. I'm sure you will be able to remember the "really important" things. I think a PDA type gadget will be a good aid for you. If I had one laying around, I'd offer it up, but sadly, I've nevre had an interst in them, prefering a paper calendar/organizer.

[tinchen.livejournal.com]

"Tomorrow is an international day of Peace. Would that it were truly so, and that the day after was another day of peace, and so forth, and so forth."

Very well put!

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

In my experience, organizers are all about habit. A PDA is no good if you don't get into the habit of using it... and a pen-and-paper system is perfectly sufficient if you use it all the time. Because of this, some of the best systems in my opinion piggyback on existing habits, like having reminders sent to your e-mail or text-messages to your phone. I do the back-of-hand thing a lot -- taking advantage of the fact that I use my hands constantly and every time I put on lab gloves or take them off, I read what's written on them.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

aren't you worried it will wash off? Then again, I'm one of those people who hates i when my hands are dirty, and that includes when I write on myself by accident with ink, so I don't think I'd be able to willingly write a message on my hand. I remember in middle school, if you bought a ticket for the "dance", they'd stamp your hand so you could get in, and I always hated having to have my hand stamped all day.

Just as long as "I will not tell lies" isn't etched into your hand, it sounds like it works for you.

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

Actually, washing out is the beauty of the system. The hand is a very temporary data storage site. All my phone numbers are in my phone, to-dos and date-relevant things in Google calendar. So if I'm without a computer and need to remember to do something, it goes on the hand. And then as soon as I sit down at a computer, I go online and add it to google calendar (or, Google notebook for to-dos, or to my phone for numbers.) In the morning, I just memorize a list of things I have to do from the calendar (Easy) but if something is particularly important or I need a specific and difficult to memorize number (like a room number for a meeting), I'll write it on the hand.

It's a system that works, but only because I actively use it.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

true. I still think i'd be worried about accidentally washing it off. I mean, I wash my hands a bunch of times in a day.