FAIL!

This is one of those blogs that falls into the I wish I would've thought of that category. Enjoy a little humor on your Wednesday:

The FAIL Blog

My Economic Illiteracy Makes Me Shudder

Look at this graph please:

[New York Times]

Ever since I watched Zeitgeist I've been giving more thought to economics, especially on the international level. I know next to nothing about international finance, macroeconomics, currency markets, etc. and these subjects are beginning to be critically important to my life. Decisions rich fuckers are making in Davos are beginning to mess with important aspects of my life, such as how much it costs me to provide the sort of material comfort I'm accustomed to. Those guys are fucking with my LIFE! If my bread starts costing me more because massive corporations are purchasing all the grains to convert into biofuels in order to power the factories converting grains into biofuels in order to stay competitive in the international grain market and your low emission vehicle eats the corn I was going to have for dinner or give to my cow...

Doesn't anyone ask themself, where did all the money come from that was funding all that subprime lending? How come seemingly out of nowhere were banks willing to loan almost any idiot a whole bunch of money? Any thoughtful person would tell you that there are a lot of people out there who really ought not to be loaned $100,000. It's ludicrous. It's like these loans were backed by people who gave way too much credit (PUN INTENDED) to the American public because they don't know the American people, they're not from here, i.e. the Chinese Central Bank.

Anyhoo...back to my original point, that set of graph charts. Notice how the stocks fluctuated but are basically back at zero? They're worth the same amount they were but in comparison to everything else, they're worth less. In other words, it's like there's a group of guys who own all the corn and they're accustomed to trading it for stakes in American corporations. In recent years they're offering less corn for shares of our companies. They'd rather keep their corn or trade it with someone who offers a better deal. That's just basic business right there. Any fool can see that...unless they're being fooled by their government which keeps them in the dark about the real worth of their money by keeping the consumer in an enclosed bubble maintained by bizarre monetary policy and a largely compliant media industry. The things the US accuses China of doing, the US does, too. That's how America operates. Keep pointing the finger and maybe nobody will think to look at themselves.

The Machine Is Aware of Us

This makes me shudder in a good way...like the chills I get sometimes when I pee:

Ambient Intelligence is a key component for future beyond 3G mobile and wireless communication systems. However, the enabling technology that provides systems with information to allow for Ambient Intelligence has been neglected and currently consists of many independent modes of input, mainly relying on active user interactions or specialised sensor systems gathering information. e-SENSE proposes a context capturing framework that enables the convergence of many input modalities, mainly focusing on energy efficient wireless sensor networks that are multi-sensory in their composition, heterogeneous in their networking, either mobile or integrated in the environment e.g. from single sensors to thousands or millions of sensors collecting information about the environment, a person or an object. This framework will be able to supply ambient intelligent systems with information in a transparent way hiding underlying technologies thus enabling simple integration.

e-SENSE VISION – e-SENSE enables capturing of Ambient Intelligence for Beyond 3G Mobile Communication Systems through Wireless Sensor Networks.

How'd I get there? From this blog: Capturing ambient intelligence. I don't think the blog's writer really added anything to the general discussion, nor did he achieve his stated goal of explaining How tech trends affect our lives. He just conveyed a vague sense of paranoia.

How'd I get there? By way of Capturing ambient intelligence which also doesn't seem to add anything to the general discussion. It's just another headsup. I got to that article by way of Smart Mobs. Makes sense.

Will the technological environment we're creating come to resemble the spiritual environment our ancestors created? A world where everything is aware of us? Where the Eye of God is upon us at all times...

the computer knows who I am

This is what trips me out about the whole internet experience, experiences like the one I just had.  I was going through my semi regular regimen of reading various rss feeds when I came across this article on Wired: Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened?

What's interesting is the not only the content of the article, which is excellently written, but also the form of the article.  Look at the way it uses links and what I'll call insets, those windows within the browser window, which are in fact mini browser windows.  Weird.  I know I'm in the Googleverse when I just happen to be on an article on Wired and when I look at the insets it has for quoted Google based sites I see a "Hi, ________".  That inset knows who I am!

I read an article about artificial intelligence.  My computer and the internet know who I am.

Will Christensen act as poorly in Neuromancer as he did in Star Wars?

I have a Google Alert set for the word cyberpunk. The latest buzz is swarming around JoBlo's report that Hayden Christensen is set to star as the character Case in the film adaptation of Neuromancer.

It's interesting to me the way such news proliferates and spreads. Alerts have been coming in for about a week now on the rumor which still appears to have just one source, JoBlo. I imagine that most people wouldn't come across such news via Google Alerts, so I looked at all the links I've been provided to the story and G4's The Feed is probably the most likely source for most people. But they're not a primary source, and they don't claim to be. They link their story to a Dark Horizons report. And where did Dark Horizons get their info? JoBlo, of course.

So where did JoBlo get its information? JoBlo.com sources, of course!

Screwy/nutty wedding bands

Not that marriage is on my mind much...but I came across these lovely rings by way of NOTCOT.org:

Kiley Granberg

I thought she actually liked me!

What a wild and wacky planet we live on.

But if you yourself are starting to worry that you are a prostitute , help is at hand from the kindly bouncers at Zapatas- Shanghai’s premier place to hear the Grease mega-mix 6 times a week.

Are you a prostitute? In my handful of years in the bar/restaurant industry, I can't say I've ever had to boot someone for being a prostitute or heard of someone prostituting who didn't know that's what they were doing...unless you count those chicks who go after the solitary older guy sitting at the bar who looks wealthy...

Reuters is Racist

As of 1:36 AM in Pensacola FL, Reuters has this on their front page:

Barack Obama's bid to be America's first black president is under fire from Democrats and Republicans alike before political debates on Saturday to help voters pick who to vote for in New Hampshire's primary.

That's on the front page. Maybe no one else sees anything weird about that, but what I see is a news organization inflicting a certain perspective on what they're covering. Isn't Obama running for President? I didn't know he was running for Black President. WTF?