Thoughts on my Mind

"Low-Tech" But Creative I Must Admit September 11, 2008

Just another thing you have to worry about in the world. When will people try not get ahead by screwing over others? Whoever it was that came up with the concept of money must be rolling over in their grave now thanks to all the problems it has caused through out history. I suppose if it wasn’t money then it would be something else that would cause people to react in the same fashion.

Why can’t we just go back to the bartering system? You know, when things were simple. I’ll admit that this system has its flaws but personally I think that the advantages definitely outshine its pitfalls.

Well here is the article you have been waiting for.

Extracurricular Affairs August 10, 2008

Well by this time I am sure that just about everyone has heard about the John Edwards affair. If not, or you for some reason want to read more about it, just click on the previous link and it will take you to an article in the New York Times. Now I am not supporting this kind of activity but really why would you put something like this out when your family is in the public eye? To me it just seems like something that you would want to keep between yourself and your spouse. Regardless, what was he thinking? He is married and even has children. Luckily his two youngest children are not that old, so the kids they will interact with most of their lives will not remember this, but it will still be one of those “family secrets” you are ashamed of. As for his oldest child (who is at Harvard Law) good luck to her and dealing with this, since you know people will want to talk to her about it and how she feels.

Also this not only hurts him and his family but also a certain democratic candidate who happens to be running for president. It also doesn’t help that Edwards chose to endorse Obama and not Hillary Clinton. I am sure that the McCain campaign will you this to their advantage when the time is right.

In any case it seems that democrats seem to take part in “extramarital activities”, weather holding office or not. Kennedy, Clinton, and now Edwards, just to name a few. Let’s see if (and hopefully not) Obama will keep the tradition good.

MIT Can Shut Down Your Brain March 30, 2007

The first paragraph from the article, MIT Neuroengineer’s Pulsing Light Silence Overactive Neurons, written by Anne Tafton.

Scientists at the MIT Media Lab have invented a way to reversibly silence brain cells using pulses of yellow light, offering the prospect of controlling the haywire neuron activity that occurs in diseases such as epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease.

The entire article can be found here. It is definitely worth reading at least twice.

PredatorSpace February 16, 2007

Its really beginning to get old. Parents trying to hold online communities, such as MySpace, responsible for children’s actions. You think that if parents spent as much time and effort educating and monitoring as they do filing lawsuits then maybe this wouldn’t be a major problem. It is starting to get harder and harder to navigate the internet without finding a story about an underage child that was taken advantage of by an online predator.
From what I have read, MySpace has a way to prevent underage (for some reason I think the limit is set at 13 year of age) surfers from creating accounts with the site. However, as we all know it is almost impossible to verify if someone is telling the truth about their age when online. If the system is like that of other sites then all it ask is for the user to input their date of birth, and anyone with basic math knowledge can figure out what fake birthday they need to be allowed to use the site. Personally I believe that asking for a credit card or checking account number is a much more reliable method of age verification, but this to has its obvious flaws (if they are not immediately obvious to you then too bad, because I am not going to waste time explaining such a trivial matter).
Here is a typical “MySpace story“. Basically the stupid girl said that she was 18 (in truth she was only 13) and met a 19 year old guy online. We all know what happened next so no need to get into it. One Question I have is, how the hell did she manage to meet him? I mean as you know she certainly wasn’t able to drive to the meeting place so someone had to give her a ride. But I digress. According to this article there is some intelligence in Texas. Yes, it was a Texas Judge that realized that what caused this inappropriate meeting were the deceitful actions of an idiotic 13 year old girl.
Now I’m no parent, but I think that I somehow managed to pick up a thing or two about raising children from my parents. One of the first things I learned before ever using the internet was that you are never to agree to meet people in public unless you already know them in person. Also is it not a parent’s job to protect their children? I would take this also include monitoring their internet activity until they believe that the child can be trusted and is mature enough to know how handle this new freedom.
Well I could go on for some time, but I think I’ll head to bed now.

Dave Chappelle and Naruto.

We Need to Work Together February 9, 2007

So looking around the internet for informative and interesting news. I found a few things that I believe will produce a positive response with my readers.

1) Samsung introduces its new phone. Some people are going as far as calling it the “iPhone killer”. I remember just a few months ago when “experts” were calling Microsoft’s Zune the “iPod killer”, we all know how that turned out. Sure it might take a while for the Zune to pick up popularity but let us be honest, I don’t think that it will ever become bigger than the iPod. Also these so called experts were predicting that Microsoft would have sold millions of Zunes in the first few months of its launch. I am not sure of the exact number of sold units but from what I have read it falls well below these inflated predictions.

2) While on the topic of iPods it should be noted that Carl Kruger, a Democrat from Brooklyn, is planning to introduce a resolution that would basically ban the use of iPods and other electronic devices on the streets of New York. He is claiming that people are spending too much time on these gadgets and as a result they are being placed at higher risk to receive traffic injuries. One comment a form user left was “…if a person would rather be indulged in listening to their Green Day album than paying attention when they cross the street, they deserve to get hit, before they have the change to take on any task of important, such as raising a child…” Since this story should be read I will provide a link to redirect you.

3) WHO WANTS $25M? Well this can be yours if you find a way to solve the “problem” of global warming. Personally I find it interesting that Richard Branson, a British billionaire, would offer such a prize for a person or organization to fix a problem that does not even exist. Come on, doesn’t this guy watch the Colbert Report? Steven on his show clearly proved that global warming was created by the Democrats in order to distract us from the real issues. Such as how the rich need more tax cuts. As we all know, anything that comes out of Steven Colbert’s mouth is automatically truth. He is basically Wikipedia in human form.
If you thought that I was actually serious before then there must be something wrong with you. That or you have never seen the Colbert Report. Well honestly I think this is a wonderful idea, now I have something else to do in the time between solving Millennium Problems which only offer a $1M prize.

Bravehearts – Quick to Back Down

How Harvard Slowed Light February 8, 2007

This is truly amazing. Even though I am not able understand how it was done or how it will better benefit society, I know it is a major accomplishment.

“…In 1999, Dr. Hau headed a team of scientists that slowed light, which travels a brisk 186,282 miles a second when unimpeded, to a leisurely 38 miles an hour by shining it into an exotic, ultra cooled cloud of sodium atoms. At temperatures a fraction of a degree above absolute zero, the atoms coalesce into a single quantum mechanical entity known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. Shining a laser on the cloud tunes its optical properties so that it becomes molasses when a second light pulse enters it….”

The rest of the article can be found at this url.

"Teaching Needs Priority" January 15, 2007

What follows is part of the article, Teaching Needs Priority, written by Jonathan Richmond, Tech Senior Editor.

“…In the “research” university, the demands for “learning” in an integrated sense fall prey to the paper chase for money, prestige and tenure. A large proportion of MIT faculty must raise part of their salary from outside support. This need for funding leads to research which is likely to please sponsors, rather than to advance the general state of knowledge. Perhaps that is why there are many more professors who can help teach their students how to blow each other up rather than discuss how to live together in harmony and peace….Not only is teaching peripheral; in some cases the demands of money-seeking and administering leave too little time for actual academic research, which is delegated to graduate students who exist at the subservient end of a taskmaster-to-slave relationship. Undergraduate UROPs, meanwhile, too often become a cheap form of labor to perform the dirty work nobody else wants to touch. The artificial definition of a university in terms of “research,” and, in particular, in terms of outside-sponsored research, is a prescription for a troubled education system….”

For obvious reasons I have left out a large portion of his article. If you wish to read it feel free to do so at this link. Feel free to leave any thoughts about his arguments.

I would have to say that I personally agree with my of the statements that were made [assuming that they were in fact true]. In my opinion the last two paragraphs, no included in what I have posted, are the best part of the entire article. It is at this point that he changes gears. He no longer talks about how the problem is affecting the faculty, students, and university; he instead mentions one individual’s [a former dean of undergraduate education at MIT] ideas on how to solve the problem.