expralitemonk

A post office near me was slated for closure, but the citizens who would have been affected by this closure raised a stink and it was rescinded. This particular community is composed of fairly wealthy people who felt that it was a hardship to drive an extra 3 miles to the nearest post office, but interestingly, don't think it's a hardship to drive 10 miles to get groceries. (This town has no grocery stores.) As long as the post office leadership is overridden by whiners and their congressmen, no progress will be made.

The postal system was devised back when it was a major, all day hassle to visit the closest village. Now it takes 5 minutes and you can pick up a coffee on the way.

I met him at a book signing at the Boulder Book Store in the mid 90's. He walked to the front of the audience, and said "I'm feeling a bit wobbly today. I was recently in Texas and asked my friend: What do you do for fun in Texas?"

At this point I thought he was going to say, "And we got really drunk." But he said "So we went shopping for cowboy boots." And he proudly showed us his boots.

The conventional flush toilet requires a massive water treatment system with pumps every few miles to push the wastewater through the pipe. But the costs are hidden from the payer, which makes everyone happy.

Maybe journalists need to be rebranded into "intelligence gatherers." Not many people will pay for stories. They will pay for useful intel that isn't shared with a wide audience. "They" being governments, corporations, investors.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/148

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2680 He wasn't the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, but he was Emperor of Rome. ;)

Walden http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/205

Most of the big problems in life have already been pondered eons ago.

Many side projects don't have eye candy. Maybe skip the screenshot altogether, and just give a summary + link, which is what "One Thing Well" did. http://onethingwell.org

Great idea though. (I might use it soon.)

Interesting fellow. Earlier in his life he was a heavy-metal guitarist: in 1979 he sent a demo tape to the group Iron Maiden. (He wasn't hired...) Later he wrote a history book fortelling the decline of the West and the rise of the East, and the CIA asked him to conduct a seminar on his studies.

Fun fact: the USSR and USA created several artificial radiation belts by testing nuclear bombs in the upper atmosphere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_radiation_be...

Governments based on giving favors to members of one's tribe tend to be less stable.

Sounds like a great reason to form an LLC for any software endeavor.

Self defense sprays have come a long way in 30 years, and they can stop a bear. In fact a person using bear spray to stop a bear attack is less likely to be injured than a person using a gun. http://www.bearsmart.com/docs/BearSprayVsBullets.pdf

In 1890, 43% of the US population were farmers. Because of technology (fossil fuels, internal combustion engines), most of those jobs are gone for good. We're going through a massive change and some people's livelihoods will go away permanently. They're not entitled to make a living at an obsolete job, but I think we owe it to them to provide a comprehensive safety net so they can survive and retrain.

How many people are killed or injured due to accidents caused by having to wake up an hour earlier? What does this cost our economy?

SomaFM. Makes me feel like I'm in a science fiction epic.

I watched the Al Jazeera "Counting the Cost" episode discussing alternative currencies. Very interesting. People with ideas discussing said ideas instead of taking potshots at each other.

The U.S. media can take a lesson from Al Jazeera: really high quality productions with interesting graphics. It makes American news shows look like video games.

I spend two minutes a day collecting junk mail from my mail box and throwing it into the recycle bin. That's 624 minutes a year. One government employee puts trash into my mail box and another government employee takes it away. Any useful mail I receive can be either delivered by electronic methods or UPS/FedEx.

I went online shopping this weekend for a laptop for Mrs. expralitemonk. With an open heart we considered Windows or Mac. On the Macbook web page I found: specs for each model, estimated battery life, and the price. On one page! For all models! http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macboo... Every Windows site I went to required multiple clicks just to get rudimentary information. If you want my money, please make buying your product easy.

If Nate Silver is right, then there is no reason to pay any further attention to the election (other than showing up and voting of course). That means fewer people watching or reading the news and their advertisements.

A famous writer was asked to give a speech at a conference for people who were trying to get published. He agreed. On the appointed day he walked to the front of the auditorium, stood at the podium, and asked "Why aren't all of you home writing?" and sat down.

I started learning Django as my first web framework. If I had to do it over I would have spent a month with Flask, and then moved to Django. Django is a big app, and I found it difficult to build a mental model of its workings. Maybe starting with a smaller framework would have made it easier.

Leisure: ocean blue. Productive: muted red.

As technology gets more powerful, the oops factor comes into play. Oops, I dropped a flask in my lab: 1 million people dead. Oops, the SCRAM system for a reactor that's out of control, it had a software bug: 10 million people dead.

Technical people understand how fragile modern systems are. As life gets more complicated, innocent mistakes can turn a country into a desert. Malicious intent raises the body count even higher.

Video information cannot (yet) be indexed so you cannot look up the information on Google.

Hmmm...I live in Florida so our outside glare is pretty bad. I have a one year old MacBook Pro and have never had a problem (even outside in the shade in the summertime).

I'm sure there are very good Windows laptops. As the previous poster wrote, if you do your research, you can find one. I don't want to do research.* I want to walk into a store and say "I'll take that one," and have it work.

* Useful, accurate online information on laptop battery life and other performance statistics is pretty much nonexistent. The only trustworthy information source is to ask strangers "How do you like your laptop?"

I go to a coffee shop often and among other things, I notice people's machines and how they interact with them. Two observations:

1. People with non-Mac machines always plug their laptop into AC power before starting work (unless it's a netbook). My previous Windows laptop had battery life of about 2 hours while my Macbook Pro has about 5 hours.

2. People with non-Mac machines have to be very careful where they sit, or the glare from the outside makes it impossible for them to see their screens. This was my experience with a Windows laptop as well.

With every new release the Mac operating system becomes, in my opinion, more complex and harder to use. Mac hardware on the other hand, just gets better.

+1 on recommending Buddhism the philosophy, as distinct from Buddhism the religion. The philosophy teaches that everything changes, and all you have is now, so keep your mind on the now and the later will take care of itself.

Mindfulness meditation is extremely useful in tamping down panic attacks or dealing with chronic physical pain.

We live in a society where mental problems are considered to be a spiritual problem, not a medical one. The brain is an organ and organs malfunction. I think the younger people see this and are more likely to get the help and medication they need. It seems to be the +60 year olds who will go to their priest instead of their doctor.

I wouldn't mind an autonomous squirt-gun that can distinguish between crows and cardinals, and can keep the former out of my bird feeder.