Thursday, February 7, 2013
Mitigate, adapt, profit, cook
I keep seeing the Liberals and other climate change deniers talking about how it would be more profitable to have an ad hoc approach to the climate change that doesn't exist, in case it happens. Which it won't. But if it does, it would just require a bit of cleverness from business (their stock in trade) to come up with something extra cool that would solve the problem we don't really have) And then there would be profits for everyone (much like the underpants gnomes).
Which sort of misses the point a tad. Well, several points really. And several tads I suppose. What is a tad anyway? And is it in any way related to a chad or The Chad? These are the sorts of issues I think about. Pathetic really.
If these people have biological adaptation in mind, they need to be taken somewhere secure and quiet. Species adaptation to environment change is very slow and exceedingly brutal. Maybe we'll start seeing Foreign Legion hats with 'Adapt or Die' printed on them. They could have 'Mostly Die' on the back to save the sensibilities of tender hearted people.
Anyway, the more specialised a species is (requires a specific ecological niche) the more endangered it is likely to be when the environment changes, especially if it changes quickly. Also, species that rely on a network of other species for their survival, like all top predators, are particularly at risk when the environment changes. Who would the top predators be in this world then? Lions, tigers, bears, sharks ... humans.
Most businesses only flourish during stable times. There's always the exceptions of arms dealing, pubs and brothels but your tender young entrepreneur tends not to go well when the excrement impacts the rotating air distribution device.I suppose I'm rambling towards the idea that managing climate change (because we certainly aren't showing any sign of stopping it) is unlikely to be achieved by clever entrepreneurs. Rather it is more likely to achieved by repressive war time bi-partisan bloody mindedness. But we can't see the problem creeping up on, because it's really creeping up on our kids and grandchildren.
tad, chad, Chad, The Chad
From Dictionary.com
tad [tad] Noun Informal
1. a small child, especially a boy.
2. a very small amount or degree; bit: Please shift your chair a tad to the right. The frosting could use a tad more vanilla.
chad [chad] Noun Computers .
a small paper disk or square formed when a hole is punched in a punch card or paper tape.
Chad i/ˈtʃæd/ (French: Tchad, Arabic: تشاد Tšād), officially known as the Republic of Chad, is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon and Nigeria to the southwest, and Niger to the west. Due to its distance from the sea and its largely desert climate, the country is sometimes referred to as the "Dead Heart of Africa".
(The) Chad: Starfish, I would just like to say that I'm honored, honored to see you taking an interest in my work and I also think you're very pretty and... (sees girls getting scuba gear on) Starfish? Where are you going? Starfish are you going swimming? Where are you going? Where are you going again Starfish? Was it the Chad?
Dylan: No the Chad was great.
Chad: The Chad was great.
Charlie's Angels 2000
The Chad was Tom Green.
There is no excuse for this so sort of writing and no known cure short of death (which may be a little excessive).
Scapeegoat, scrape growth
scape·goat [skeyp-goht]
noun
1. a person or group made to bear the blame for others or to suffer in their place.
2. Chiefly Biblical . a goat let loose in the wilderness on Yom Kippur after the high priest symbolically laid the sins of the people on its head. Lev. 16:8,10,26.
verb (used with object)
3. to make a scapegoat of: Strike leaders tried to scapegoat foreign competitors.
scrape growth [skreyp-goht]
see shave
I don't know why I do this.
Basically goats are only interested in eating and sex, and the odd fight. Why must the innocent be so cruelly treated? Also, spookily, goats don't shave.
Also there was an ad for Christian singles on this dictionary.com page called www.ChristianMingle.com. Find your soul mate. Shag them senseless. But piously and with guilt, repentance and lots of frantic make up sex.
KR - a thought
It's probably too late for this but ...
KR: Bipolar disorder symptoms and signs
In order to qualify for the diagnosis of bipolar disorder, a person must experience at least one manic episode. Symptoms of mania must last at least a week (unless it is a mixed episode) and include
- elevated, expansive, or irritable mood;
- racing thoughts;
- pressured speech (rapid, excessive speech);
- decreased need for sleep;
- grandiose beliefs (for example, feeling like one has super powers or superlative talents or faults);
- tangential speech (repeatedly changing topics to topics that are hardly related);
- increased goal directed activity;
- impulsivity and poor judgment.
www.medicinenet.com/bipolar_disorder/page3.htm#symptoms
Hmmm. Just a thought. I hope I am wrong.
While I don't think people should be stigmatised for mental illness, they do need treatment (for their own sake and for the sake of those around them), especially when they are in positions of power and responsibility.
Tittle
An interesting fact (i.e cheap filler) I read recently told me that 'The dot over the letter "i" is called a tittle'. Really? Off to dictionary.reference.com where I am told a tittle is 'a dot or other small mark in writing or printing, used as a diacritic, punctuation etc'. So not specifically the dot over an i, just one of a class of minor markings. So there you go. I really only wanted to put the word 'tittle' on the blog so that I could have a little tittle tattle about a tittle title. Sorry - I'm going back on the meds now.
Wordle
Today's word is 'wordle'. I wondered where these word cloud illustrations I had seen were coming from and happened to notice a reference in a Guardian article so I tracked it down. Wordle is a very cool Java applet you can try at www.wordle.net. Sure it's been around for years but it's new to me.
Nothing ever being easy, I tried it in Chrome and Firefox but both of them said my Java was out of date and when I tried to update it I was told my Microsoft Installer Service was broken and I should piss off (all the knowledgebase fixes having failed or not worked for some other reason - following the instructions at one point lead to the Google desktop being loaded! I think it may be time to move to Windows 7 with a lovely clean install).
So I loaded Internet Explorer and it worked - slowly! The pictures I've uploaded are derived from Jodie Fosters coming out speech and a meditation on the recent death of my modem router. Also, as I was writing this I've realised yet again that Facebook is not suited to verbose bastards or complexity so I might move all of this to the blog.
IT in dem olden days
I was reading Jakob Neilsen's Alertbox entry on improving screen resolution www.useit.com/alertbox and it made me all nostalgic. Briefly.
When I started in the tech pubs business, typesetting machines (at 2400 dpi) were being replaced by laser printers at 300 dpi (if you were lucky) or dot matrix printers at 75 dpi (if you weren't). Why choose a technology with much lower resolution? So that more people can produce material and not have to wait on the whims of typesetters and editors who knew their employment was based on a production bottle neck and were fighting a rearguard action. They lost. As a result, lots more crap was lying around at much lower resolution. Why did the creators of this crap think it was a wonderful thing? Because they had written it and their egos were stroked and because they had composed it on a green screen monitor at 75dpi. All that eye strain was worth it, wasn't it?
Also the IT people were young and enterprising. They wanted nothing to do with typesetting markup by fusty old editors, the smell of photographic chemicals or difficult typesetter operators who wouldn't stay late to finish a job. They wanted to bring pixels to the people. And build an empire they could rule in perpetuity. In the long run, they also lost when the WWW appeared so crap could be seen forever anywhere! Progress.
ebooked, line and sinker
Then it appears I can buy (some) ebooks from Amazon as long as I use their Kindle reader app (OK - If I can download it and I'm pretty sure someone has cracked their proprietary ebook format so I can save it for later). Or I can rent a book from Google, read it anywhere on any device provided I have an internet connection. But I can't have the file. Makes it a bit harder to give the book to someone else to read. Or I can use Kobo or one of the traditional publisher websites or bookshops. Little did I know.
Then there are the search engines. Give me strength.
Just searched for Together: The rituals, pleasures and politics of co-operation by Richard Sennett which as followers of my micro publishing empire would know is about ways to combat tribalism. It's sociology. Kobo turned up lots of suggestions from their bondage department with titles like Teach Me, Daddy, Girls on Girls: 7', Way Beyond Whipped and my personal favourite The Babysitter is a Good Girl for Daddy. I haven't read any of the works of Lolli Love but I'm reasonably sure they aren't sociology.
Presumably the Kobo take on tribalism is that the best way to fix it is to distract the guys with submissive chicks who are absolutely gagging for it. Or not. I suspect Kobo's search engine needs to look at the genre tag when offering alternatives. They also want $22.89 for it. Amazon UK wants $24 (plus postage the bastards) for a hardback copy which I submit your honour will way outlast my computer system. Amazon doesn't have a Kindle ebook for it for Australian denizens - if I was a Yank it would be $18.10, but the Amazon is apparently antipodean. There's no Google ebook either though at least the search brought up alternatives like Origin of Group Identity and Gossip and the everyday production of politics rather than Shag Me Senseless Big Boy.
Further trolling and I tried Barnes & Noble who had it as a Nook ebook for US$15.40. That's more like it! Is there an Android App? Yes! Hooray! But is this an aberration? And will I be locked into yet another proprietary format?
Another test: looked for Alain de Boton's Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion. Kobo's got for AU$9.99 but B&N want $13.99 for it. Damn. I need something to help me buy the ebook at the best price (to help offset the cost of the Samsung and because I'm cheap) but also something to help me keep it all together because if I use multiple stores they are all going to put the files in weird places on my tablet. That's assuming I decide to put them on the tablet at all and not on my main PC which I back up into the cloud with DropBox as well as onto physical media from time to time (not often enough despite having suffering the torments of the damned by losing lots of stuff over my 20+ years of computing - will I ever learn?).
It all makes logging into Amazon and paying their disgraceful mail charges almost worthwhile. Stay tuned (not)!
[This was a FB note from Monday, 5 March 2012 at 23:12 that subsequently disappeared and was only rediscovered by dutiful help searching FB. Sort of suggest they don't want people posting more than a few lines at a time, presumably because the mobile young FBer has a fairly short attention span, or at least so they believe anyway.]
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